Heroes of to-day; John Muir, John Burroughs, Wilfred Grenfell, Robert F. Scott, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Edward Trudeau, Bishop Rowe, Jacob A. Riis, Herbert C. Hoover, Rupert Brooke, George W. Goethals

HEROES

John Burroughs
John Muir

J

Herbert G.Hoover

MARY R.PARKMAN

HEROES OF TO-DAY

John Muir among his beloved trees

LHEROES OF TO-DAY

JOHN MUIR .'. JOHN BURROUGHS .'. WILFRED

GRENFELL .'. ROBERT F. SCOTT .'. SAMUEL

PIERPONT LANGLEY .'. EDWARD

TRUDEAU .'. BISHOP ROWE .'. JACOB A.

RIIS .'. HERBERT C. HOOVER

RUPERT BROOKE .'. GEORGE

W. GOETHALS

BY

MAKY R. PARKMAN

Author of "Heroines of Service," etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO,

1917

Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
THE CENTUBY Co.

Published September, 1917

TO
MY FATHER

FOREWORD

Once, when I had been telling a group of chil-
dren some stories of the heroes of old, one of
the number who had always followed the tales
with breathless interest, said :

"Tell us the story of a hero of to-day !"

" There are no heroes to-day, no real heroes,
are there?" put in another. "Oh, of course I
know there are great men who do important
things," he added, "but there isn't any story to
what they do, is there? — anything like the dar-
ing deeds of the knights and vikings, or of the
American pioneers?"

Of course I tried to tell the children that the
times in which we live bring out as true hero
stuff as any time gone by. Nay, I grew quite
eloquent in speaking of the many phases of
our complex modern life with its many duties,
its new conscience, its new feeling of individual
responsibility for the welfare of all.

Then I told the stories of some of the heroes
vii

FOREWORD

who are fighting "in the patient modern way,"
not against flesh and bood with sword and spear,
but against the unseen enemies of disease and
pestilence; against the monster evils of igno-
rance, poverty and injustice. We decided that
the "modern viking," Jacob Riis, had a story
that was as truly adventurous as those of the
plundering vikings of long ago ; that Dr. Gren-
f ell, the strong friend of Labrador, had certainly
proved that life might be a splendid adventure ;
and that the account of Captain Scott's noble
conquest of every danger and hardship, and at
the last of disappointment and defeat itself, was
indeed an "undying story." Joyously we fol-
lowed the trail of that splendid hero of the
heights, John Muir, and of that gentle lover of
the friendly by-paths of Nature, John Bur-
roughs, and found that there was no spot in
woods or fields, among mountains or streams,
that did not have its wonder tale. The stories
of those brave souls — like Edward Trudeau, the
good physician of Saranac, and Samuel Pier-
pont Langley, the inventor of the heavier-than-
air flying-machine, who struggled undaunted in
the face of failure for a success that only those
who should come after them might enjoy, were

viii

FOREWORD

particularly inspiring. From them we turned
to the heroic figure of the " prophet-engineer,"
General Goethals, who proved that faith and
perseverance can truly remove mountains ; and
Herbert C. Hoover, master of mines and of
men, whose great talent for organization and
efficient management brought bread to starving
millions.

Carlyle has said that "the history of what
man has accomplished in this world is at bottom
the History of the Great Men who have worked
here." When the real history of our day is
written, will it not be seen that some of its most
important and significant chapters are those
which have nothing to do with great cataclysms,
such as the wars of nation against nation?
Will it not be seen that the victories of peace
are not only "no less renowned than war," but
that they are, in truth, the most enduring?
These "heroes of to-day" — doctor, naturalist,
explorer, missionary, engineer, inventor, jour-
nalist, patriot — workers for humanity in many
places and in many ways, are indeed

"A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time."
ix

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE LAIRD OF SKYLAND : JOHN Mum . . 3

II THE SEER OP WOODCHUCK LODGE: JOHN

BURROUGHS 31

III THE DEEP-SEA DOCTOR: WILFRED GREN-

FELL 53

IV THE CAPTAIN OF His SOUL : CAPTAIN SCOTT 81
V A MODERN VIKING: JACOB Rns . . . 105

VI A PIONEER OF THE OPEN : EDWARD L. TRU-

DEAU 133

VII "THE PROPHET-ENGINEER": GEORGE

WASHINGTON GOETHALS 163

VIII A SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY":

BISHOP ROWE 201

IX A HERO OF FLIGHT: SAMUEL PIERPONT

LANGLEY 233

X A POET-SOLDIER : RUPERT BROOKE . . . 263

XI A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD: HERBERT C.

HOOVER . . 295

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

John Muir Among His Beloved Trees . Frontispiece

John Muir and John Burroughs in the Yosemite
Valley 25

Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell 55

The Hospital at St. Anthony, Northern New-
foundland 66

Captain Robert F. Scott 87

Jacob A. Riis 110

The Jacob A. Riis Settlement 119

Edward L. Trudeau 146

First Sanitarium Cottage Built 155

Major Goethals 178

The "Man of Panama" at Panama . . . .195

Bishop Peter T. Rowe 213

Samuel P. Langley 248

Rupert Brooke 274

Herbert C. Hoover 300

The Belgian Children's Christmas Card . . .317

THE LAIRD OF SKYLAND:
JOHN MUIR

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

Nature's peace will flow into you

As sunshine into trees;

The winds will blow their freshness into you,

And the storms their energy ;

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

JOHN Mum.

HEROES OF TO-DAY

THE LAIRD OF SKYLAND

A SMALL Scotch laddie was scrambling
about on the storm-swept, craggy ruins of
Dunbar Castle. He was not thinking of the
thousand years that had passed over the grim
fortress, or of the brave deeds, celebrated in
legend and ballad, that its stones had witnessed.
He was glorying in his own strength and daring
that had won for him a foothold on the highest
of the crumbling peaks, where he could watch
the waves dash in spray, and where, with out-
flung arms and face aglow with exultation, he
felt himself a part of the scene. Sea, sky, rocks,
and wild, boy heart seemed mingled together as
one.

Little John Muir loved everything that was
wild. The warnings and "skelpings" of his
strict father could not keep him within the safe

3

HEROES OF TO-DAY

confines of the home garden. The true world
was beyond — the salt meadows, with nests of
skylarks and field-mice, the rocky pools along
the shore where one might find crabs, eels, and
all sorts of interesting scaly creatures. But
above all, there were the rocky heights where
one might climb.

Sometimes the truant was sent to bed without
his supper. But even then he made opportuni-
ties for climbing feats. In company with his
little brother David, John played games of
"scootchers" (dares) in which the boys crept
out of their dormer-windows and found con-
genial mountaineering exercise on the slate
roof, sometimes hanging from the eaves by one
hand, or even — for an instant — by a single
finger.

It was only on Saturdays and during vaca-
tions, however, that these lads could taste the
delights of roving. Johnnie Muir 's school-days
began when he was not quite three years old.
Can you picture the sturdy infant trudging
along, with the sea- wind blowing out behind him
like a flag the little green bag that his mother
had hung around his neck to hold his first book?

4

JOHN MUIK,

This infant had already learned his letters, how-
ever, from the shop signs, and it was not long
before he passed the first mile-stone and spelled
his way into the second book. When eight
years old, John entered the grammar-school.
Here he studied Latin and French, besides Eng-
lish, history, geography, and arithmetic. In re-
gard to the methods employed, this doughty
Scotchman used to say, with a twinkle: "We
were simply driven pointblank against our books
like a soldier against the enemy, and sternly or-
dered: 'Up and at 'em! Commit your lessons
to memory ! ' If we failed in any part, however
slight, we were whipped, for the grand, simple,
Scotch discovery had been made that there was
a close connection between the skin and the
memory, and that irritating the skin excited the
memory to any required degree.'*

From the school playground the boys loved
to watch the ships at sea and guess where they
were bound. In stormy weather, that brought
the salt spume from the waves over the wall,
they often saw the brave vessels tossed against
the rocky shore. Many of John's school-books
showed ships at full sail on the margins, par-

5

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ticularly the one that stirred his imagination
most — the reader which told about the forests of
America, with their wonderful birds and sugar-
maple trees.

One evening, when John and David were loy-
ally trying to forget dreams of voyages to magic
lands where brave adventure awaited one at
every turn, and master their lessons for the next
day, their father came into the room with won-
derful news.

"Bairns," he said, "you need na learn your
lessons the nicht, for we 're gaen to America the
morn!"

How the words sang in their hearts ! ' ' Amer-
ica the morn!" Instead of grammar, a land
where sugar-trees grew in ground full of gold ;
with forests where myriads of eagles, hawks,
and pigeons circled about millions of birds'
nests; where deer hid in every thicket; and
where there was never a gamekeeper to deny a
lad the freedom of the woods !

Only their grandfather looked troubled, and
said in a voice that trembled more than usual:
"Ah, puir laddies! Ye '11 find something else
ower the sea forby gold and birds' nests and

6

JOHN MUIB

freedom frae lessons. Ye '11 find plenty of
hard, hard work."

But nothing could cast a shadow on their joy.
"I'm gaen to Amaraka the morn!" they
shouted to their envying, doubting schoolmates.

It took six weeks and a half for the old-fash-
ioned sailing-vessel to cross the Atlantic. The
father had taken three of the children, John,
David, and Sarah, to help him make a home in
the wilderness for the rest of the family. The
spot selected was near Kingston, Wisconsin,
then settled only by a few scattered, hardy pion-
eers. Here, with the help of their nearest
neighbors, they built in a day a cabin of rough,
bur-oak logs.

This hut was in the midst of the woods which
fringed a flowery meadow and a lake where
pond-lilies grew. The boys had not been at
home an hour before they discovered a blue-
jay's nest with three green eggs, and a wood-
pecker's hole, and began to make acquaint ince
with the darting, gliding creatures of springs
and lake.

"Here," said John Muir, "without knowing
it, we were still at school; every wild lesson a

7

HEROES OF TO-DAY

love lesson, not whipped but charmed into us."
Soon farm life began in earnest. Fields were
cleared and plowed ; a frame house was built on
the hill; and the mother with the younger chil-
dren came to join these pioneers. It would
seem that the long days of unceasing toil —
planting, hoeing, harvesting, splitting rails, and
digging wells — that retarded the growth of the
active lad would have completely quenched the
flickerings of his wild, eager spirit. But he
managed to absorb, in the most astonishing way,
the lore of woods and fields and streams, until
the ways of birds, insects, fishes, and wild plant-
neighbors were as an open book to him.

It was not long before his alert mind began
to hunger for a real knowledge of the books
which in his childish days he had studied with-
out understanding. He read not only the small
collection of religious books that his father had
brought with him from Scotland, but also every
stray volume that he could borrow from a neigh-
bor.

When John was fifteen, he discovered that the
poetry in the Bible, in Shakespeare, and in Mil-
ton could give something of the same keen joy

8

JOHN MUIB

that a Sunday evening on a hilltop made him
feel, when sunset and rising moon and the
hushed voices of twilight were all mingled in one
thrilling delight. All beauty was one, he found.

The noble lines echoed in his memory as he
cradled the wheat and raked the hay. The pre-
cious opportunities for reading were stolen five
minutes at a time when he lingered in the
kitchen with book and candle after the others
had gone to bed. Night after night his father
would call with exasperated emphasis : " John,
do you expect me to call you every night I You
must go to bed when the rest do."

One night as he descended on the boy with
more than usual sternness his anger was some-
what disarmed when he noticed that the book in
question was a Church history. "If you will
read," he added, "get up in the morning. You
may get up as early as you like. ' '

That night John went to bed wondering how
he was going to wake himself in order to profit
by this precious permission. Though his was
the sound sleep of a healthy boy who had been
splitting rails in the snowy woods, he sprang
out of bed as if roused by a mysterious reveille

9

HEROES OF TO-DAY

long before daylight, and, holding his candle to
the kitchen clock, saw that it was only one
o'clock.

' ' Five hours to myself ! " he cried exultingly.
"It is like finding a day — a day for my very
own!"

Realizing that his enthusiasm could not suf-
fice to keep him warm in the zero weather, and
that his father would certainly object to his
making a fire, he went down cellar, and, by the
light of a tallow dip, began work on the model
of a self-setting sawmill that he had invented.

"I don't think that I was any the worse for
my short ration of sleep and the extra work in
the cold and the uncertain light," he said; "I
was far more than happy. Like Tarn o ' Shan-
ter I was glorious — ' 0 'er all the ills of life vic-
torious."

When his sawmill was tested in a stream that
he had dammed up in the meadow, he set him-
self to construct a clock that might have an at-
tachment connected with his bed to get him up
at a certain hour in the morning. He knew
nothing of the mechanism of timepieces beyond
the laws of the pendulum, but he succeeded in

10

JOHN MUIR

making a clock of wood, whittling the small
pieces in the moments of respite from farm-
work. At length the "early-rising machine"
was complete and put in operation to his satis-
faction. There was now no chance that the
weary flesh would betray him into passing a
precious half-hour of his time of freedom in
sleep.

"John," said his father, who had but two
absorbing interests, his stern religion and his
thriving acres, "John, what time is it when you
get up in the morning?"

"About one o'clock," replied the boy, trem-
blingly.

"What time is that to be stirring about and
disturbing the whole family?"

"You told me, Father — " began John.

"I know I gave you that miserable permis-
sion," said the man with a groan, "but I never
dreamed that you would get up in the middle of
the night."

The boy wisely said nothing, and the blessed
time for study and experimentation was not
taken away.

Even his father seemed to take pride in the
11

HEROES OF TO-DAY

hickory clock that he next constructed. It was
in the form of a scythe to symbolize Time, the
pendulum being a bunch of arrows to suggest
the flight of the minutes. A thermometer and
barometer were next evolved, and automatic
contrivances to light the fire and to feed the
horses at a given time.

One day a friendly neighbor, who recognized
that the boy was a real mechanical genius, ad-
vised him to take his whittled inventions to the
State Fair at Madison. There two of his
wooden clocks and the thermometer were given
a place of honor in the Fine Arts Hall, where
they attracted much attention. It was gener-
ally agreed that this farm-boy from the back-
woods had a bright future.

A student from the university persuaded the
young inventor that he might be able to work his
way through college. Presenting himself to the
dean in accordance with this friendly advice,
young Muir told his story, explaining that ex-
cept for a two-month term in the country he had
not been to school since he had left Scotland in
his twelfth year. He was received kindly,
given a trial in the preparatory department,

12

JOHN MUIB

and after a few weeks transferred to the fresh-
man class.

During the four years of his college life John
Muir made his way by teaching school a part of
each winter and doing farm-work summers.
He sometimes cut down the expense of board to
fifty cents a week by living on potatoes and
mush, which he cooked for himself at the dormi-
tory furnace. Pat, the janitor, would do any-
thing for this young man who could make such
wonderful things. Years afterward he pointed
out his room to visitors and tried to describe the
wonders it had contained. It had, indeed,
looked like a branch of the college museum,
with its numerous botanical and geological
specimens and curious mechanical contriv-
ances.

Although he spent four years at the State
University, he did not take the regular course,
but devoted himself chiefly to chemistry,
physics, botany, and geology, which, he thought,
would be most useful to him. Then, without
graduating, he started out "on a glorious bo-
tanical and geological excursion which has
lasted," he said, in concluding the story of his

13

HEROES OF TO-DAY

early life, "for fifty years and is not yet com-
pleted."

He journeyed afoot to Florida, sleeping on
the ground wherever night found him. * ' I wish
I knew where I was going," he wrote to a friend
who asked about his plans. "Only I know that
I seem doomed to be ' carried of the spirit into
the wilderness.'

Because he loved the whole fair earth and
longed to know something of the story that its
rocks and trees might tell, he wandered on and
on. After going to Cuba, a siege of tropical
fever, contracted by sleeping on swampy
ground, caused him to give up for a time a cher-
ished plan to make the acquaintance of the vege-
tation along the Amazon.

"Fate and flowers took me to California," he
said. He found there his true Florida (Land
of Flowers), and he found, also, what became
the passion of his life and his life work — the
noble mountains, the great trees, and the mar-
velous Yosemite. Here he lived year after year,
climbing the mountains, descending into the
canons, lovingly, patiently working to decipher
the story of the rocks, and to make the wonder

14

JOHN MUIR

and beauty which thrilled his soul a heritage for
mankind forever.

He lived for months at a time in the Yosemite
Valley, whose marvels he knew in every mood
of sunshine, moonlight, dawn, sunset, storm,
and winter whiteness of frost and snow. He
would wander for days on the heights without
gun or any provisions except bread, tea, a tin
cup, pocket-knife, and short-handled ax.

Once, on reading a magazine article by an en-
thusiastic* young mountain-climber, who dilated
upon his thrilling adventures in scaling Mount
Tyndall, Mr. Muir commented dryly: "He
must have given himself a lot of trouble. When
I climbed Tyndall, I ran up and back before
breakfast."

At a time when trails were few and hard to
find, he explored the Sierra, which, he said,
should be called, not the Nevada, or Snowy
Range, but the Range of Light. When night
came, he selected the lee side of a log, made a
fire, and went to sleep on a bed of pine-needles.
If it was snowing, he made a bigger fire and lay
closer to his log shelter.

4 'Outdoors is the natural place for man," he
15

HEROES OF TO-DAY

said. "I begin to cough and wheeze the minute
I get within walls. "

Never at a loss to make his way in the wilder-
ness, he was completely bewildered in the midst
of city streets.

"What is the nearest way out of town?'* he
asked 'of a man in the business section of San
Francisco soon after he landed at the Golden
Gate in 1868.

"But I don't know where you want to go!"
protested the surprised pedestrian.

"To any place that is wild," he replied.

So began the days of his wandering in path-
less places among higher rocks * ' than the world
and his ribbony wife could reach. " " Climb the
mountains, climb, if you would reach beauty,"
said John Muir, the wild, eager spirit of the lad
who had braved scoldings and "skelpings" to
climb the craggy peaks of Dunbar shining in his
eyes.

When his friends remonstrated with him be-
cause of the way he apparently courted danger,
he replied: "A true mountaineer is never
reckless. He knows, or senses with a sure in-
stinct, what he can do. In a moment of real

16

JOHN MUnt

danger his whole body is eye, and common skill
and fortitude are replaced by power beyond
our call or knowledge. ' '

It was not entirely the passion for beauty that
took this lover of the sublime aspects of nature
up among the mountains and glaciers — "up
where God is making the world." It was also
the passion for knowledge — the longing to know
something of the tools the Divine Sculptor had
used in carving the giant peaks and mighty
canons.

"The marvels of Yosemite are the end of the
story," he said. "The alphabet is to be found
in the crags and valleys of the summits."

Here he wandered about, comparing canon
with canon, following lines of cleavage, and
finding the key to every precipice and sloping
wall in the blurred marks of the glaciers on the
eternal rocks. Every boulder found a tongue;
"in every pebble he could hear the sound of
running water. " The tools that had carved the
beauties of Yosemite were not, he concluded,
those of the hidden fires of the earth, the rend-
ing of earthquake and volcanic eruption, but the
slow, patient cleaving and breaking by mighty

17

HEROES OF TO-DAY

glaciers, during the eons when the earth's sur-
face was given over to the powers of cold — the
period known as the Ice Age.

"There are no accidents in nature," he said.
"The flowers blossom in obedience to the same
law that keeps the stars in their places. Each
bird-song is an echo of the universal harmony.
Nature is one. ' '

Because he believed that Nature reveals
many of her innermost secrets in times of
storm, he often braved the wildest tempests on
the heights. He spoke with keen delight of the
times when he had been "magnificently snow-
bound in the Lord's Mountain House." He
even dared to climb into the very heart of a
snow-cloud as it rested on Pilot Peak, and it
seemed that the experience touched the very
springs of poetry in the soul of this nature-
lover. He found that he had won in a moment
"a harvest of crystal flowers, and wind-songs
gathered from spiry firs and long, fringy arms
of pines."

Once in a terrible gale he climbed to the top
of a swaying pine in order to feel the power of
the wind as a tree feels it. His love for the

18

JOHN MUIR

trees was second only to his love for the moun-
tains. His indignation at the heedless destruc-
tion of the majestic Sequoias knew no bounds.
" Through thousands and thousands of years
God has cared for these trees," he said: "He
has saved them from drought, disease, ava-
lanches, and a thousand straining and leveling
tempests and floods, but He cannot save them
from foolish men."

It was due mainly to his untiring efforts that
the "big trees" of California, as well as the
wonderful Yosemite Valley, were taken under
the protection of the Nation to be preserved for
all the people for all time.

He discovered the petrified forests of Ari-
zona, and went to Chile to see trees of the same
species which are no longer to be found any-
where in North America. He traveled to Aus-
tralia to see the eucalyptus groves, to Siberia
for its pines, and to India to see the banyan-
trees. When asked why he had not stopped at
Hong Kong when almost next door to that in-
teresting city, he replied, "There are no trees
in Hong Kong."

In order to make a livelihood that would per-
19

HEROES OF TO-DAY

mit him to continue his studies of nature in the
mountains, Mr. Muir built a sawmill where he
prepared for the use of man those trees "that
the Lord had felled. ' ' Here during the week he
jotted down his observations or sketched, while
he watched out of the tail of his eye to see when
the great logs were nearing the end of their
course. Then he would pause in his writing or
sketching just long enough to start a new log on
its way.

Sometimes he undertook the work of a shep-
herd, and, while his "mutton family of 1800
ranged over ten square miles," he found time
for reading and botanizing.

A very little money sufficed for his simple
needs. Indeed, Mr. Muir once declared that he
could live on fifty dollars a year.

"Eat bread in the mountains," he said, "with
love and adoration in your soul, and you can
get a nourishment that food experts have no
conception of."

He spoke with pitying scorn of the money-
clinking crowd who were too "time-poor" to en-
joy the keenest delights that earth can offer.

"You millionaires carry too heavy blankets
20

JOHN MUIR

to get any comfort out of the march through
life," he said; "you don't know what it is you
are losing by the way. ' '

When there was a home and "bairnies" to
provide for, he managed a fruit-ranch; but he
was often absent in his beloved mountains
weeks at a time, living on bread, tea, and the
huckleberries of cool, glacial bogs, which were
more to his taste than the cherries or grapes
that he had to return in time to harvest.

Mr. S. Hall Young, in his interesting narra-
tive "Alaska Days with John Muir," gives a
graphic account of the way John o* Mountains
climbed :

Then Muir began to slide up that mountain. I had been
with mountain-climbers before, but never one like him. A
deer-lope over the smoother slopes, a sure instinct for the
easiest way into a rocky fortress, an instant and unerring
attack, a serpent glide up the steep; eye, hand, and foot all
connected dynamically; with no appearance of weight to
his body — as though he had Stockton's negative-gravity
machine strapped on his back.

In all his mountain-climbing in the Sierras,
the Andes, and the high Himalayas, he never
knew what it was to be dizzy, even when stand-
ing on the sheerest precipice, or crossing a

21

HEROES OF TO-DAY

crevasse on a sliver of ice above an abyss of
four thousand feet. He said that his simple
laws of health gave him his endurance and his
steady nerves; but when we think of the wee
laddie in Scotland, hanging from the roof by
one finger, or balancing himself on a particu-
larly sharp crag of the black headland at Dun-
bar, we believe that he was born to climb.

"I love the heights," he said, "where the air
is sweet enough for the breath of angels, and
where I can feel miles and miles of beauty flow-
ing into me."

He never ceased to marvel at the people who
remained untouched in the presence of Nature 's
rarest loveliness. "They have eyes and see
not," he mourned, as he saw some sleek, com-
fortable tourists pausing a moment in their con-
cern about baggage to point casually with their
canes to the Upper Yosemite Falls, coming with
its glorious company of shimmering comets out
of a rainbow cloud along the top of the cliff, and
passing into another cloud of glory below.

All of Mr. Muir's books — "The Mountains of
California," "Our National Parks," "My First
Summer in the Sierra," and "The Yosemite" —

22

JOHN MUIR

are splendid invitations to " climb the moun-
tains and get their good tidings." " Climb, if
you would see beauty!" every page cries out.
"If I can give you a longing that will take you
out of your rocking-chairs and make you willing
to forego a few of your so-called comforts for
something infinitely more worth while, I shall
have fulfilled my mission."

Bead his story of his ride on the avalanche
from a ridge three thousand feet high, where
he had climbed to see the valley in its garment
of newly-fallen snow. The ascent took him
nearly all day, the descent about a minute.
When he felt himself going, he instinctively
threw himself on his back, spread out his arms
to keep from sinking, and found his "flight in
the milky way of snow-stars the most spiritual
and exhilarating of all modes of motion."

In "The Yosemite," also, we learn how a true
nature-lover can meet the terrors of an earth-
quake. He was awakened at about two o'clock
one moonlit morning by a "strange, thrilling
motion," and exalted by the certainty that he
was going to find the old planet off guard and
learn something of her true nature, he rushed

23

HEROES OF TO-DAY

out while the ground was rocking so that he had
to balance himself as one does on shipboard dur-
ing a heavy sea. He saw Eagle Rock fall in a
thousand boulder-fragments, while all the thun-
der he had ever heard was condensed in the roar
of that moment when it seemed that ' ' the whole
earth was, like a living creature, calling to its
sister planets."

"Come, cheer up!" he cried to a panic-
stricken man who felt that the ground was about
to swallow him up; "smile and clap your hands
now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on
her knee to amuse us and make us good."

He studied the earthquake as he studied the
glaciers, the scarred cliffs, and the flowers, and
this is the lesson that it taught him :

All Nature's wildness tells the same story : the shocks and
outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring waves,
and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of
every sort — each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making
love-beats of Nature's heart.

Read about his adventure in a storm on the
Alaska glacier with the little dog, Stickeen.
You will note that he had eyes not only for the
ice-cliffs towering above the dark forest and

24

John Muir and John Burroughs in the Yoseinito
Valley

JOHN MUIR

for the mighty glacier with its rushing white
fountains, but also for the poor "beastie" who
was leaving blood-prints on the ice when the
man stopped to make him moccasins out of his
handkerchief. As you read you will not won-
der that this man who could write about Na-
ture 's loftiest moods could also write that most
beautiful and truly sympathetic of all stories of
dog life.

The last years of John Muir's long career
were, like the rest, part of * ' the glorious botani-
cal and geological excursion," on which he set
out when he left college. The names that he
won — "John o* Mountains,'* "The Psalmist of
the Sierra, " « ' The Father of the Yosemite ' '—all
speak of his work. Remembering that he found
his fullest joy in climbing to the topmost peaks,
we have called him "The Laird of Sky land."
Going to the mountains was going home, he said.

The Muir Woods of "big trees" near San
Francisco and Muir Glacier in Alaska are fit-
ting monuments to his name and fame. But the
real man needs no memorial. For when we visit
the glorious Yosemite, which his untiring ef-
forts won for us and which his boundless en-

27

HEROES OF TO-DAY

thusiasm taught us rightly to appreciate, we
somehow feel that the spirit of John Muir is
still there, in the beauty that he loved, bidding
us welcome and giving us joy in the freedom of
the heights.

28

THE SEER OF WOODCHUCK LODGE:
JOHN BURROUGHS

In every man's life we may read some lesson. What
may be read in mine? If I see myself correctly, it is this:
that the essential things are always at hand ; that one's own
door opens upon the wealth of heaven and earth; and that
all things are ready to serve and cheer one. Life is a strug-
gle, but not a warfare; it is a day's labor, but labor on
God's earth, under the sun and stars with other laborers,
where we may think and sing and rejoice as we work.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

THE SEER OF WOODCHUCK LODGE

SOME farm-boys were having a happy Sun-
day in the woods gathering black birch and
wintergreens. As they lay on the cool moss,
lazily tasting the spicy morsels they had found
and gazing up at the patches of blue sky through
the beeches, one of the boys caught sight of a
small, bluish bird, with an odd white spot on
its wing, as it flashed through the trembling
leaves. In a moment it was gone, but the boy
was on his feet, looking after it with eyes that
had opened on a new world.

So "Deacon Woods, " the old familiar play-
ground that he thought he knew so well, where
blue-jays, woodpeckers, and yellow-birds were
every-day companions, contained wonders of
which he had never dreamed. The older broth-
ers knew nothing and cared nothing about the
unknown bird. What difference did it make,
anyway? But the little lad of seven who fol-
lowed its flight with startled, wondering eyes

31

HEROES OF TO-DAY

seemed to have been born again. His eyes were
opened to many things that had not existed for
him before.

Do you remember the story of the monk of
long ago who, while copying in his cell a page
from the Holy Book, chanced to ponder on the
words that tell us that a thousand years in God's
sight are but as a day? As the monk wondered
and doubted how such a thing might be, he heard
through his window the song of a strange, beau-
tiful bird, and followed it through the garden
into the woods beyond. Wandering on and
listening, with every sense alive to the delights
about him, it seemed that he had spent the hap-
piest hour he had ever known. But when he
returned to his monastery, he found himself a
stranger in a place that had long forgotten him.
He had been wandering for a hundred years in
the magic wood, listening to the song of the
wonderful bird.

In somewhat the same way John Burroughs
followed where the gleam of the little bluish
warbler led him through woods and fields for
more than seventy years. That is why Time
missed him out of the great reckoning. One

32

JOHN BURROUGHS

who listens to the song of life knows nothing
of age or change. So it is that the boy John
never slipped away from Burroughs, the man.
So it is that the Seer of Woodchuck Lodge is
eighty years young.

Do you know what it means to be a seer? A
seer is one who has seeing eyes which clearly
note and comprehend what most people pass a
hundred times nor care to see. He looks, too,
through the outer shell or appearance of things,
and learns to read something of their hidden
meaning. He has sight, then, and also insight.
He looks with his physical eyes and also with
the eyes of the mind and spirit.

We always think of a seer as an old man, but
little John Burroughs — John o' Birds, as some
one has called him — began to be ' ' an eye among
the blind" that Sunday in the woods when he
was a lad of seven. He led a new, charmed life
as he weeded the garden and later plowed the
fields. He saw and heard life thrilling about
him on every side, and all that he saw became
part of his own life. He drank in the joy of the
bobolink and the song-sparrow with the air he
breathed, as the warm sunshine and good, earth

33

HEROES OF TO-DAY

smell of the freshly turned furrow entered at
every pore.

Another day almost as memorable as that
which brought the flash of the strange bird was
the one which gave him a glimpse into the un-
explored realm of ideas. A lady visiting at the
farm-house noticed a boyish drawing of his, and
said, " What taste that boy has !" Taste, then,
might belong to something besides the food that
one took into one 's mouth. It seemed that there
were new worlds of words — and thoughts — of
which his farmer folk little dreamed.

Again, one day when watching some road-
makers down by the school-house turn up some
flat stones, he heard a man standing by exclaim,
"Ah, here we have, perhaps, some antiquities !"
Antiquities! How the word rang in his fancy
for days ! Oh, the magic lure of the world of
words !

It seemed that school and books might give
him the freedom of that world. He went to the
district school at Boxbury, New York, summers
until he was ten, when his help was needed on
the farm. After that, he was permitted to go
only during the winters. In many ways he was

34

JOHN BURROUGHS

the odd one of the family, and his unaccountable
interest in things that could never profit a
farmer often tried the patience of his hard-work-
ing father.

One day the boy asked for money to buy an
algebra. What was an algebra, anyway, and
why should this queer lad be demanding things
that his father and brothers had never had!
John got the algebra, and other precious books
beside, but he earned the money himself by sell-
ing maple sugar. He knew when April had
stirred the sap in the sugar-bush a week or more
before any one else came to tap the trees, and
his early harvest always found a good market.

And what a joyous time April was! "I
think April is the best month to be born in," said
John Burroughs. "One is just in time, so to
speak, to catch the first train, which is made up
in this month. My April chickens are always
the best. . . . Then are heard the voices of
April — arriving birds, the elfin horn of the first
honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the
day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the
marshes at sun-down, the camp-fire in the sugar-
bush, the smoke seen afar rising from the trees,

35

HEROES OF TO-DAY

the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on
the sunny slopes. April is my natal month, and
I am born again into new delight and new sur-
prises at each return of it. Its name has an
indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables
are like the calls of the first birds — like that of
the phoebe-bird or of the meadow-lark."

The keen joy in the feel of the creative sun-
light and springing earth — the eager tasting of
every sight and sound and scent that the days
brought — were not more a part of his own throb-
bing life than the desire to know and understand.
When he was fifteen he had the promise that
he might go to the academy in a neighboring
town. That fall, as he plowed the lot next the
sugar-bush, each furrow seemed to mark a step
on the way.

When the time drew near, however, it proved
as strange and unusual a desire as that for the
algebra. The district school had been good
enough for his brothers. So he put his disap-
pointment behind him as he went for another
winter to the Roxbury school. "Yet I am not
sure but I went to Harpersfield after all," said
Mr. Burroughs; "the long, long thoughts, the

36

JOHN BURROUGHS

earnest resolve to make myself worthy, the
awakening of every part and fiber of me, helped
me on my way as far, perhaps, as the unattain-
able academy could have done. ' '

The next year found the youth of seventeen
teaching a country school for eleven dollars a
month and ' ' board around. ' ' How homesick he
felt for the blue hills at home, for the old barn,
with the nests of the swallows and phoebe-birds
beneath its roof, for the sugar-bush, and the
clear, laughing trout-streams. He could see his
mother hurrying through her churning so that
she might go berrying on the sunny slope of Old
Clump, and he knew what she brought back with
the strawberries — dewy dreams of daisies and
buttercups, lilting echoes of bobolinks and
meadow-larks.

In October the long term was over and he
went home with nearly all his earnings, — over
fifty dollars, — enough to pay his way at the
Hedding Literary Institute for the winter term.

In the spring of 1855 he went to New York
City for the first time, hoping to find a position
as teacher. He was not successful in this quest,
but the trip was memorable for a raid on the

37

HEROES OF TO-DAY

second-hand book-stalls. He reached home
some days later "with an empty pocket and an
empty stomach, but with a bagful of books."

Always attracted chiefly to essays, the works
of Emerson influenced him greatly. He ab-
sorbed their spirit as naturally and completely
as he had absorbed the sights and sounds of his
native hill-country. His first article — an essay
called "Expression," which was printed with-
out signature in The Atlantic Monthly — was
by many attributed to Emerson. Lowell, who
was at that time editor of The Atlantic, told,
with much amusement, that before accepting the
contribution he had looked through all of Emer-
son's works expecting to find it and confound
this plagiarizing Burroughs with a proof of his
rascality.

While teaching school near West Point he
one day found, in the library of the Military
Academy, a volume of Audubon — and entered
upon his kingdom. Here was a complete chart
of that bird world which he had never ceased
to long to explore since that memorable day
when he had seen the little blue warbler. There
was time, too, for long walks, time to live with

38

JOHN BURROUGHS

the birds — to revive old ties as well as to make
new friends.

In speaking of his study of the birds, Mr.
Burroughs once said:

''What joy the birds have brought me ! How
they have given me wings to escape the tedious
and deadly. Studied the birds! No, I have
played with them, camped with them, summered
and wintered with them. My knowledge of them
has come to me through the pores of my skin,
through the air I have breathed, through the
soles of my feet, through the twinkle of the
leaves and the glint of the waters."

At once he felt a longing to write something of
the joy he was gaining through this comrade-
ship with his feathered friends. There was
nothing that spoke of Emerson or any other
model in his pages now. He had found his own
path. He was following the little blue bird into
a world of his own.

A chance came to go to Washington to live.
For several years, while working as a clerk in
the Treasury, he spent all his spare moments
with the birds. He knew what nests were to
be found near Rock Creek and along Piney

39

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Branch. It seemed that he heard the news as
soon as a flock of northbound songsters stopped
to rest for a day or two in the Capitol grounds.
While watching a vault where great piles of
the Nation's gold lay stored, he lived over in
memory the golden days of his boyhood spent in
climbing trees, tramping over hills, and through
grassy hollows, or lying with half-shut eyes by
the brookside to learn something of the life-
story of the birds. There were leisure after-
noons which brought no duty save that of sit-
ting watchful before the iron wall of the vault.
At such times he often tried to seize some of the
happy bits that memory brought, a twig here, a
tuft there, and now a long, trailing strand —
stray scraps of observation of many sorts —
which he wove together into a nest for his brood-
ing fancy. And we, too, as we read those pages
hear the "wandering voice" of the little bird
of earth and sky, who wears the warm brown
of one on his breast and the blue of the other
on his wings ; we see the dauntless robin a-tilt
on the sugar-bush; we catch the golden melody
of the wood- thrush — and "the time of singing
birds" has come to our hearts. He has not only

40

JOHN BURROUGHS

seeing eyes, but an understanding heart, this
seer and lover of the birds, and so his bits of
observation have meaning and value. He
called the book in which these various bird-
papers were gathered together * ' Wake Robin, ' '
the name of a wild-flower that makes its ap-
pearance at the time of the return of the birds.

This book was well named, not only because
it suggested something of the spirit and feeling
of the essays, but also because it was the herald
of several other delightful volumes such as
"Signs and Seasons, " "Winter Sunshine,"
"Birds and Poets."

Do you remember how Emerson says in his
poem "Each and All"

I thought the sparrow's note from Heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home in his nest at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky;

He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.

When John Burroughs writes about the birds,
he brings with their life and song the feeling of
the "perfect whole" — the open fields, the wind-
ing river, the bending sky, and the cool, fra-
grant woods. For he always gives, with the

41

HEROES OF TO-DAY

glimpses of nature that lie culls, something of
himself, something of his own clear-seeing,
open-hearted appreciation.

The ten years spent in Washington were
memorable not only for his first success as a
nature writer, but also for the experiences
brought through the Civil War and his friend-
ship with the "good gray poet," Walt Whit-
man. Years after, Mr. Burroughs said that his
not having gone into the army was probably
the greatest miss of his life. He went close
enough to the firing-line on one occasion to
hear "the ping of a rifle-bullet overhead, and
the thud it makes when it strikes the ground. ' '
Surely there should be enough of the spirit of
his grandfather, who was one of Washington's
Valley Forge veterans, to make a soldier ! How
well he remembered the old Continental's thrill-
ing tales as they angled for trout side by side,
graybeard and eager urchin of nine! How
well he remembered the hair-raising stories of
witches and ghosts that made many shadowy
spots spook-ridden. He had learned to stand
his ground in the woods at nightfall, and at the
edge of the big black hole under the barn, and

42

JOHN BURROUGHS

so to put to flight the specters before and the
phantoms behind. But when, that night on the
battle-field, he saw a company of blue-coated
men hurrying toward a line of rifle-flashes that
shone luridly against the horizon, he concluded
that his grandfather had "emptied the family
powder-horn" in those Revolutionary days, and
that there was no real soldier stuff in the grand-
son.

If his failure to enlist in the army was the
greatest miss of his life, his friendship with
Whitman was its greatest gain. They took to
the open road together, the best of boon com-
panions, and Burroughs came to know the poet
as he knew the birds. His essay "The Flight
of the Eagle," is one of the most spirited and
heartfelt tributes that one great man ever paid
another.

One should, however, hear Mr. Burroughs
talk about the poet and watch his kindling en-
thusiasm. He had been teaching us how to
roast shad under the ashes of our camp-fire one
day when a chance remark put him in a remi-
niscent mood. We all felt that evening as if we
had come in actual touch with the poet.

43

HEROES OF TO-DAY

"You see," our host concluded, "Whitman
was himself his own best poem — a man, take
him all in all. Do you remember how George
Eliot said of Emerson, 'He is the first man I
have ever met'? Many people felt that way
about Whitman."

As I looked at Whitman's friend I found my-
self thinking, "Surely here is a man, take him
all in all — a man in whom the child's heart, the
youth's vision, the poet's enthusiasm, the scien-
tist's faithfulness, and the thinker's insight, are
all wonderfully blended."

After the years in Washington, his work as a
bank examiner made Mr. Burroughs seek a
place for his home near New York City. The
spot selected was a small farm on the Hudson,
not far from Poughkeepsie, which he called
Eiverby. Here, in his eager delight over the
planting of his roof-tree, he helped, so far as his
time permitted, in the building, placing many
of the rough-hewn stones himself. He tells with
some relish a story of the Scotch mason, who, on
looking back one evening as he was being ferried
across to his home on the east shore of the river,
saw, to his great anger another man at work on

44

JOHN BURROUGHS

his job. Returning in fury to see why he had
been supplanted, he surprised the owner him-
self in the act of putting in place some of the
stones for the chimney.

"Weel, you are a hahndy mahn!" he ex-
claimed.

The big river never appealed to Mr. Bur-
roughs, however, as the friendly Pepacton and
the other silver-clear streams where he had
caught trout as a boy. It brought too close the
noise of the world, the fever of getting and
spending. Besides, its rising and ebbing tides,
its big steamers and busy tugs, its shad
and herring, were all strange to him; his
boyhood home had known nothing of these
things.

He built for himself a bark-covered retreat
some two miles back from the river in a bowl-
shaped hollow among the thickly wooded hills.
"Slabsides," as he called this human bird's-
nest, was a two-story shack of rough-hewn tim-
bers.

"One of the greatest pleasures of life is to
build a house for one's self," he said; " there
is a peculiar satisfaction even in planting a tree

45

HEROES OF TO-DAY

from which you hope to eat the fruit or in the
shade of which you hope to repose. But how
much greater the pleasure in planting the roof-
tree, the tree that bears the golden apples of
hospitality. What is a man 's house but his nest,
and why should it not be nest-like, both outside
and in, snug and well-feathered and modeled
by the heart within!"

Many guests climbed the steep, rocky trail and
enjoyed the hospitality of this retreat, among
others President Eoosevelt and his wife. The
naturalist, whom Colonel Eoosevelt affection-
ately called "Oom John," cooked the dinner
himself, bringing milk and butter from his cave
refrigerator, broiling the chicken, and prepar-
ing the lettuce, celery, and other vegetables
which grew in the rich black mold of the hol-
low. As he prepared and served the meal with
all the ease of a practised camper there was
never a halt in the talk of these two great lovers
of the outdoor world. If the poet-sage who de-
plored that

Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind

could have spent a day with John Burroughs, he

46

JOHN BURROUGHS

would have found one man, at least, who never
knew the tyranny of possessions, and so was
never possessed by them. He is the type of the
sane, happy human being who, while journey-
ing through life, has taken time to live by the
way. He knows the enchanting by-paths of ex-
istence, the friendly trails that wind over mead-
ows and hills.

"I am in love with this world," he says; "I
have nestled lovingly in it. It has been home.
I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its har-
vests, I have waited upon its seasons, and al-
ways have I reaped what I have sown. While
I delved, I did not lose sight of the sky over-
head. While I gathered its bread and meat for
my body, I did not neglect to gather its bread
and meat for my soul."

Though the whole wide out-of-doors is home
to John Burroughs, there is one spot that is
more than any other the abiding-place of his
affections. This is the country of his childhood
in the Catskills. Here he spends his summers
now at Woodchuck Lodge, a cottage about half
a mile from the old homestead. Here he is
happy in a way that he can be nowhere else.

47

HEROES OF TO-DAY

The woods and fields are flesh of his flesh, the
mountains are father and mother to him.

A day with John Burroughs at Woodchuck
Lodge will always seem torn from the calendar
of ordinary living, a day apart, free, wholesome,
and untouched by petty care. His world is in-
deed "so full of a number of things" that all
who come within the spell of its serene content
are "as happy as kings."

As he makes whistles of young shoots of dog-
wood for his small grandson he tells of his
school-days, when necessity taught his hand the
cunning to make his own pens, slate-pencils, and
ink-wells. "And they were a very good sort,
too," he adds. "Those were home-made days.
I remember my homespun shirts, made of our
own flax, yellow at first and as good as ever
hair-shirt could have been in the way of scratch-
ing penance. All my playthings were home-
made. How well I remember my trout-lines of
braided horsehair, and the sawmill in the brook
that actually cut up the turnips, apples, and
cucumbers that I proudly fed it."

"These, too, are home-made days of the best
sort," we think as we look about the rustic porch

48

JOHN BURROUGHS

and chairs made of silvery birch, and at the
silver-haired seer, surrounded by his grand-
children and the friends who gather about him
with the happy feeling of being most entirely at
home.

"You like my chairs with the bark on?" he
says. "It 's a sort of hobby of mine to see how
the natural forks and crooks and elbows which
I discover in the saplings and tree-boles can be
coaxed into serving my turn about the house,
and I make it a point to use them as nearly as
possible as they grow."

We sit on the porch at his feet, watching the
chipmunks frisk along the fences and the wood-
chucks creep furtively out of their holes. We
do not speak for several long minutes, because
we want to taste the quiet life he loves in the
heart of the blue hills. We fancy that we can
hear in the twitter of the tree-tops a clearly un-
derstood mingling of familiar voices, and that
we feel in our hearts an answering echo that
proves us truly akin to the creatures in feathers
and fur.

"Home sights and sounds are best of all,"
says our friend, as he gazes across at the purple

49

HEROES OF TO-DAY

shadows on Old Clump. "The sublime beauty
of the Yosemite touched me with wonder and
awe, but when I heard the robin's note it touched
my heart. Bright Angel Creek in the Grand
Canon found its way into the innermost recesses
of my consciousness in the moment when it re-
minded me of the trout-stream at home."

There is another pause, in which the silver-
clear notes of the* vesper-sparrow come to us
with their "Peace, good will and good night."

"I think I am something like a turtle in the
way I love to poke about in narrow fields," he
adds whimsically; "but why should I rush hither
and yon to see things when I can see constella-
tions from my own door-step?"

And so it is indeed true that the Seer of Wood-
chuck Lodge can still find in a ramble among
his own hills the land of wonder and beauty
which he found as a boy when he followed the
flash of the unknown bird, and in the glowing
twilight of his years, with eyes that look into the
heart and meaning of things, can, from his door-
step, trace constellations undreamed of by day.

50

THE DEEP-SEA DOCTOR:
WILFRED GRENFELL

As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more,

Now, than flesh helps soul!"

BROWNING.

THE DEEP-SEA DOCTOR

WHEN people meet Dr. Grenfell, the good
doctor who braves the storms of the
most dangerous of all sea-coasts and endures the
hardships of arctic winters to care for the lonely
fisherfolk of Labrador, they often ask, with pity-
ing wonder :

"How do you manage it, Doctor, day in and
day out through all the long months ? It seems
too much for any man to sacrifice himself as
you do."

" Don't think for a moment that I 'm a mar-
tyr, " replies Dr. Grenfell, a bit impatiently,
"Why, I have a jolly good time of it ! There *s
nothing like a really good scrimmage to make
a fellow sure that he 's alive, and glad of it.
I learned that in my football days, and Labrador
gives even better chances to know the joy of
winning out in a tingling good tussle. "

Dr. GrenfelPs face, with the warm color glow-
ing through the tan, his clear, steady eyes, and
erect, vigorous form, all testify to his keen zest

53

HEROES OF TO-DAY

in the adventure of life. Ever since he could
rememher, he had, he told us, been in love with
the thrill of strenuous action. When a small
boy, he looked at the tiger-skin and other
trophies of the hunt which his soldier uncles had
sent from India, and dreamed of the time when
he should learn the ways of the jungle at first
hand.

He comes of a race of strong men. One uncle
was a general -who bore himself with distin-
guished gallantry in the Indian Mutiny at Luck-
now when the little garrison of seventeen hun-
dred men held the city for twelve weeks against
a besieging force ten times as great. One of his
father's ancestors was Sir Richard Grenville,
the hero of the Revenge, who, desperately strug-
gling to save his wounded men, fought with his
one ship against the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-
three. Perhaps you remember Tennyson's
thrilling lines :

And the stately Spanish men to their flag-ship bore him

then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught

at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign
grace;

54

Dr. Wilfred T. CJrenfell

WILFRED GRENFELL

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man

and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do;
With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!"

How these lines sang in Ms memory I Is
it any wonder that the lad who heard this'
story as one among many thrilling tales of his
own people should have felt that life was a
splendid adventure?

As a boy in his home at Parkgate, near Ches-
ter, England, he was early accustomed to stren-
uous days in the open. He knew the stretches
of sand-banks, — the famous " Sands of Dee," —
with their deep, intersecting "gutters'* where
many curlews, mallards, and other water-birds
sought hiding. In his rocking home-made boat
he explored from end to end the estuary into
which the River Dee flowed, now and again hail-
ing a fishing-smack for a tow home, if evening
fell too soon, and sharing with the crew their
supper of boiled shrimps. He seemed to know
as by instinct the moods of the tides and storm-
vexed waves, which little boats must learn to
watch and circumvent. He became a lover, also,
of wild nature — birds, animals, and plants —

57

HEROES OF TO-DAY

and of simple, vigorous men who lived rough,
wholesome lives in the open.

Though he went from the boys ' school at Park-
gate to Marlborough College, and later to Ox-
ford, he had at this time no hint of the splendid
adventures that life offers in the realm of mental
and spiritual activities. Eugby football, in
which he did his share to uphold the credit of the
university, certainly made the most vital part of
this chapter of his life. It was not until he took
up the study of medicine at the London Hospital
that he began to appreciate the value of knowl-
edge " because it enables one to do things."

There was one day of this study-time in Lon-
don that made a change in the young doctor's
whole life. Partly out of curiosity, he followed
a crowd in the poorer part of the city, into a
large tent, where a religious meeting was being
held. In a moment he came to realize that his
religion had been just a matter of believing as
he was taught, of conducting himself as did
those about him, and of going to church on Sun-
day. It seemed that here, however, were men
to whom religion was as real and practical a
thing as the rudder is to a boat. All at once he

58

WILFRED GRENFELL

saw what it would mean to have a strong guid-
ing power in one 's life.

His mind seemed wonderfully set free.
There were no longer conflicting aims, ideals,
uncertainties, and misgivings. There was one
purpose, one desire — to enter "the service that
is perfect freedom,'* the service of the King
of Kings. Life was indeed a glorious adven-
ture, whose meaning was plain and whose end
sure.

How he enjoyed his class of unruly boys from
the slums ! Most people would have considered
them hopeless "toughs." He saw that they
were just active boys, eager for life, who had
been made what they were by unwholesome
surroundings. "All they need is to get hold of
the rudder and to feel the breath of healthy liv-
ing in their faces," he said. He fitted up one
of his rooms with gymnasium material and
taught the boys to box. He took them for out-
ings into the country. When he saw the way
they responded to this little chance for happy
activity, he became one of the founders of the
Lads' Brigades and Lads' Camps, which have
done the same sort of good in England that the

59

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Boy Scouts organization has done in this coun-
try.

When he completed his medical course, the
young doctor looked about for a field that would
give chance for adventure and for service where
a physician was really needed.

"I feel there is something for me besides
hanging out my sign in a city where there are
already doctors and to spare," he said.

"Why don't you see what can be done with a
hospital-ship among the North Sea fishermen !"
said Sir Frederick Treves, who was a great sur-
geon and a master mariner as well.

When Dr. Grenfell heard about how sick and
injured men suffered for lack of care when on
their long fishing-expeditions, he decided to fall
in with this suggestion. He joined the staff of
the Mission to Deep-sea Fishermen, and fitted
out the first hospital-ship to the North Sea fish-
eries, which cruised about from the Bay of Bis-
cay to Iceland, giving medical aid where it
was often desperately needed.

When this work was well established, and
other volunteers offered to take it up, Dr. Gren-
fell sought a new world of adventure. Hearing

60

WILFRED GRENFELL

of the forlorn condition of the English-speaking
settlers and natives on the remote shores of
wind-swept Labrador, he resolved to fit out a
hospital-ship and bring them what help he could.
So began in 1892 Dr. Grenf ell's great work with
his schooner Albert, in which he cruised about
for three months and ministered to nine hun-
dred patients, who, but for him, would have had
no intelligent care.

Can you picture Labrador as something more
than a pink patch on the cold part of the map?
That strip of coast northwest of Newfoundland
is a land of sheer cliffs broken by deep fiords,
like much of Norway. Rocky islands and hid-
den reefs make the shores dangerous to ships
in the terrific gales that are of frequent occur-
rence. But this forbidding, wreck-strewn land
of wild, jutting crags has a weird beauty of its
own. Picture it in winter when the deep snow
has effaced all inequalities of surface and the
dark spruces alone stand out against the gleam-
ing whiteness. The fiords and streams are
bound in an icy silence which holds the sea itself
in thrall. Think of the colors of the moonlight
on the ice, and the flaming splendor of the north-

61

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ern lights. Then picture it when summer has
unloosed the land from the frozen spell.
Mosses, brilliant lichens, and bright berries
cover the rocky ground, the evergreens stand
in unrivaled freshness, and gleaming trout and
salmon dart out of the water, where great ice-
bergs go floating by like monster fragments of
the crystal city of the frost giants, borne along
now by the arctic current to tell the world about
the victory of the sun over the powers of cold
in the far North.

When Dr. Grenfell sailed about in the Albert
that first summer, the people thought he was
some strange, big-hearted madman, who bore a
charmed life. He seemed to know nothing and
care nothing about foamy reefs, unfamiliar
tides and currents, and treacherous winds.
When it was impossible to put out in the
schooner, he went in a whale-boat, which was
worn out — honorably discharged from service —
after a single season. The people who guarded
the lives of their water-craft with jealous care
shook their heads. Truly, the man must be
mad. His boat was capsized, swamped, blown
on the rocks, and once driven out to sea by a gale

62

WILFRED GRENFELL

that terrified the crew of the solidly built mail-
boat. This time he was reported lost, but after
a few days he appeared in the harbor of St.
John's, face aglow, and eyes fairly snapping
with the zest of the conflict.

"Sure, the Lord must kape an eye on that
man," said an old skipper, devoutly.

It was often said of a gale on the Labrador
coast, "That 's a wind that '11 bring Gren-
fell." The doctor, impatient of delays, and
feeling the same exhilaration in a good stiff
breeze that a lover of horses feels in managing a
spirited thoroughbred, never failed to make use
of a wind that might help send him on his way.

What sort of people are these to whom Dr.
Grenfell ministers? They are, as you might
think, simple, hardy men, in whom ceaseless
struggle against bleak conditions of life has de-
veloped strength of character and capacity to
endure. Besides the scattered groups of Eski-
mos in the north, who live by hunting seal and
walrus, and the Indians who roam the interior
in search of furs, there are some seven or eight
thousand English-speaking inhabitants widely
scattered along the coast. In summer as many

63

HEROES OF TO-DAY

as thirty thousand fishermen are drawn from
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to share in the
profit of the cod- and salmon-fisheries. All of
these people were practically without medical
care before Dr. Grenfell came. Can you imag-
ine what this meant? This is the story of one
fisherman in his own words :

"I had a poisoned finger. It rose up and got
very bad. I did not know what to do, so I took
a passage on a schooner and went to Halifax.
It was nine months before I was able to get back,
as there was no boat going back before the win-
ter. It cost me seventy-five dollars, and my
hand was the same as useless, as it was so long
before it was treated. ' '

Another told of having to wait nine days
after "shooting his hand" before he could reach
a doctor; and he had made the necessary jour-
ney in remarkably good time at that. He did
not know if he ought to thank the doctor for
saving his life when it was too late to save his
hand. What can a poor fisherman do without
a hand?

The chief sources of danger to these people
who live by the food of the sea are the uncertain

64

.

WILFEED GRENFELL

winds and the treacherous ice-floes. When the
ice begins to break in spring, the swift currents
move great masses along with terrific force.
Then woe betide the rash schooner that ventures
into the path of these ice-rafts ! For a moment
she pushes her way among the floating "pans"
or cakes of ice. All at once the terrible jam
comes. The schooner is caught like a rat in a
trap. The jaws of the ice monster never relax,
while the timbers of the vessel crack and splin-
ter and the solid deck-beams arch up, bow fash-
ion, and snap like so many straws. Then, per-
haps, the pressure changes. With a sudden
shift of the wind a rift comes between the huge
ice-masses, and the sea swallows its prey.

It is a strange thing that but few of the fish-
ermen know how to swim. "You see, we has
enough o* the water without goin' to bother wi'
it when we are ashore," one old skipper told
the doctor in explanation.

The only means of rescue when one finds him-
self in the water is a line or a pole held by
friends until a boat can be brought to the scene.
Many stories might be told of the bravery of
these people and their instant willingness to

67

HEROES OF TO-DAY

serve each other. Once a girl, who saw her
brother fall through a hole in the ice, ran swiftly
to the spot, while the men who were trying to
reach the place with their boat shouted to her
to go back. Stretching full length, however, on
the gradually sinking ice, she held on to her
brother till the boat forced its way to them.

Perhaps the most terrible experience that has
come to the brave doctor was caused by the ice-
floes. It was on Easter Sunday in 1908 when
word came to the hospital that a boy was very
ill in a little village sixty miles away. The doc-
tor at once got his ' ' komatik, ' ' or dog-sledge, in
readiness and his splendid team of eight dogs,
who had often carried him through many tight
places. Brin, the leader, was the one who could
be trusted to keep the trail when all signs and
landmarks were covered by snow and ice.
There were also Doc, Spy, Jack, Sue, Jerry,
Watch, and Moody — each no less beloved for
his own strong points and faithful service.

It was while crossing an arm of the sea, a ten-
mile run on salt-water ice, that the accident oc-
curred. An unusually heavy sea had left great
openings between enormous blocks or "pans"

68

WILFRED GRENFELL

of ice a little to seaward. It seemed, however,
that the doctor could be sure of a safe passage
on an ice-bridge, that though rough, was firmly
packed, while the stiff sea-breeze was making it
stronger moment by moment through driving
the floating pans toward the shore. But all at
once there came a sudden change in the wind.
It began to blow from the land, and in a moment
the doctor realized that his ice-bridge had
broken asunder and the portion on which he
found himself was separated by a widening
chasm from the rest. He was adrift on an ice-
pan.

It all happened so quickly that he was unable
to do anything but cut the harness of the dogs
to keep them from being tangled in the traces
and dragged down after the sled. He found
himself soaking wet, his sledge, with his extra
clothing, gone, and only the remotest chance of
being seen from the lonely shore and rescued.
If only water had separated him from the bank,
he might have tried swimming, but, for the most
part, between the floating pans was "slob ice,"
that is, ice broken into tiny bits by the grinding
together of the huge masses.

69

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Night came, and with it such intense cold that
he was obliged to sacrifice three of his dogs and
clothe himself in their skins to keep from freez-
ing, for coat, hat, and gloves had been lost in the
first struggle to gain a place on the largest avail-
able "pan" of ice. Then, curled up among the
remaining dogs, and so, somewhat protected
from the bitter wind, he fell asleep.

"When daylight came, he took off his gaily-
colored shirt, which was a relic of his football
days, and, with the leg bones of the slain dogs
as a pole, constructed a flag of distress. The
warmth of the sun brought cheer ; and so, even
though his reason told him that there was but
the smallest chance of being seen, he stood up
and waved his flag steadily until too weary to
make another move. Every time he sat down
for a moment of rest, "Doc" came and licked
his face and then went to the edge of the ice, as
if to suggest it was high time to start.

At last Dr. Grenf ell thought he saw the gleam
of an oar. He could hardly believe his eyes,
which were, indeed, almost snow-blinded, as his
dark glasses had been lost with all his other
things. Then — yes — surely there was the keel

70

WILFRED GRENFELL

of a boat, and a man waving to him ! In a mo-
ment came the blessed sound of a friendly voice.

Now that the struggle was over, he felt him-
self lifted into the boat as in a dream. In the
same way he swallowed the hot tea which they
had brought in a bottle. This is what one of the
rescuers said, in telling about it afterward :

"When we got near un, it didn't seem like 't
was the doctor. 'E looked so old an' 'is face
such a queer color. 'E was very solemn-like
when us took un an' the dogs in th' boat. Th'
first thing 'e said was how wonderfu' sorry 'e
was o' gettin' into such a mess an' givin' we th'
trouble o' comin' out for un. Then 'e fretted
about the b'y 'e was goin' to see, it bein' too
late to reach un, and us to' un 'is life was worth
more 'n the b'y, fur 'e could save others. But
'e still fretted."

They had an exciting time of it, reaching the
shore. Sometimes they had to jump out and
force the ice-pans apart; again, when the wind
packed the blocks together too close, they had
to drag the boat over.

When the bank was gained at last and the
doctor dressed in the warm clothes that the

71

HEROES OF TO-DAY

fishermen wear, they got a sledge ready to take
him to the hospital, where his frozen hands and
feet could be treated. There, too, the next day
the sick boy was brought, and his life saved.

Afterward, in telling of his experience, the
thing which moved the doctor most was the sac-
rifice of his dogs. In his hallway a bronze tab-
let was placed with this inscription :

TO THE MEMORY OF

THREE NOBLE DOGS

MOODY

WATCH

SPY

WHOSE LIVES WERE GIVEN
FOR MINE ON THE ICE

APRIL 2 1ST, 1908
WILFRED GRENFELL

In his old home in England his brother put up
a similar tablet, adding these words, "Not one
of them is forgotten before your Father which is
in heaven."

Besides caring for the people himself, Dr.
Grenfell won the interest of other workers —
doctors, nurses, and teachers. Through his ef-
forts, hospitals, schools, and orphan-asylums
have been built. Of all the problems, however,
with which this large-hearted, practical friend
of the deep-sea fishermen has had to deal in his

72

WILFRED GEENFELL

Labrador work, perhaps the chief was that of
the dire poverty of the people. It seemed idle
to try to cure men of ills which were the direct
result of conditions under which they lived.

When the doctor began his work in 1892 he
found that the poverty-stricken people were
practically at the mercy of unprincipled, schem-
ing storekeepers who charged two or three
prices for flour, salt, and other necessaries of
life. The men, as a result, were always in debt,
mortgaging their next summer's catch of fish
long before the winter was over. To cure this
evil, Grenfell opened cooperative stores, run
solely for the benefit of the fishermen, and es-
tablished industries that would give a chance of
employment during the cold months. A grant
of timberland was obtained from the govern-
ment and a lumber-mill opened. A schooner-
building yard, and a cooperage for making kegs
and barrels to hold the fish exported, were next
installed.

This made it possible to gather together the
people, who were formerly widely scattered be-
cause dependent on food gained through hunt-
ing and trapping. This made it possible, too,

73

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to carry out plans for general improvement —
schools for the children and some social life.
Two small jails, no longer needed in this capac-
ity, were converted into clubs, with libraries and
games. Realizing the general need for health-
ful recreation, the doctor introduced rubber
footballs, which might be used in the snow. The
supply of imported articles could not keep pace
with the demand, however. All along the coast,
young and old joined in the game. Even the
"Eskimo women, with wee babies in their hoods,
played with their brown-faced boys and girls,
using sealskin balls stuffed with dry grass.

Knowing that Labrador can never hope to do
much in agriculture, as even the cabbages and
potatoes frequently suffer through summer
frosts, the doctor tried to add to the resources
of the country by introducing a herd of rein-
deer from Lapland, together with three fam-
ilies of Lapps to teach the people how to care
for them. Reindeer milk is rich and makes
good cheese. Moreover, the supply of meat and
leather they provide is helping to make up for
the falling-off in the number of seals, due to un-
restricted hunting. The transportation af-

74

WILFRED GRENFELL

forded by the reindeer is also important in a
land where rapid transit consists of dog-
sledges.

Dr. Grenfell has himself financed his various
schemes, using, in addition to gifts from those
whom he can interest, the entire income gained
from his books and lectures. He keeps nothing
for himself but the small salary as mission doc-
tor to pay actual living expenses. All of the in-
dustrial enterprises — cooperative stores, saw-
mills, reindeer, fox-farms, are deeded to the
Deep-Sea Mission, and become its property as
soon as they begin to be profitable.

Would you like to spend a day with Dr. Gren-
fell in summer, when he cruises about in his
hospital-ship three or four thousand miles back
and forth, from St. John's all along the Labra-
dor coast? You would see what a wonderful
pilot the doctor is as he faces the perils of hid-
den reefs, icebergs, fogs, and storms. You
would see that he can doctor his ship, should it
leak or the propeller go lame, as well as the
numbers of people who come to him with every
sort of ill from aching teeth to broken bones.

Perhaps, though, you might prefer a fine,
75

HEROES OF TO-DAY

crisp day in winter. Then you could drive forty
or fifty miles in the komatik, getting off to run
when you feel a bit stiff with the cold, especially
if it happens to be uphill. You might be
tempted to coast down the hills, but you find
that dogs can't stand that any more than horses
could, so you let down the "drug" (a piece of
iron chain) to block the runners. There is no
sound except the lone twitter of a venturesome
tomtit who decided to risk the winter in a par-
ticularly thick spruce-tree. Sometimes you go
bumpity-bump over fallen trees, with pitfalls
between lightly covered with snow. Sometimes
the dogs bound ahead eagerly over smooth
ground where the only signs of the times are
the occasional tracks of a rabbit, partridge, fox,
or caribou. Then how you will enjoy the din-
ner of hot toasted pork cakes before the open
fire, after the excitement of feeding the raven-
ous dogs with huge pieces of frozen seal-meat
and seeing them burrow down under the snow
for their night's sleep. If there is no pressing
need of his services next morning, the doctor
may take you skeeing, or show you how to catch
trout through a hole in the ice.

76

WILFRED GRENFELL

Winter or summer, perhaps you might come
to agree with Dr. Grenfell that one may have
"a jolly good time" while doing a man's work
in rough, out-of-the-way Labrador. You would,
at any rate, have a chance to discover that life
may be a splendid adventure.

77

THE CAPTAIN OF HIS SOUL:
CAPTAIN SCOTT

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

TENNYSON.

THE CAPTAIN OF HIS SOUL

WE know of many heroes — heroes of long
ago, whose shining deeds make the past
bright; and heroes of to-day, whose courage in
the face of danger and hardship and whose
faithful service for others make the times in
which we live truly the best times of all. But
should you ask me who of all this mighty com-
pany of the brave was the bravest, I should an-
swer, Captain Scott. Some one has called his
story, "The Undying Story of Captain Scott.'*
Would you like to hear it, and know for your-
self why it is that as long as true men live this
is a story that cannot die I

Most people who work know what they are
working for; most men who are fighting for a
cause know where they give* their strength and
their lives. The explorer alone has to go for-
ward in the dark. He does not know what he
will find. Only he hears within his heart the
still whisper: " Something hidden. Go and
find it." And he believes that there is no far

81

HEROES OF TO-DAY

place of the earth that does not hold some truth,
something that will help us learn the secrets of
life and explain much that puzzles us in the
world to-day.

When the explorer has once begun to think
and wonder about the great unseen, unknown
countries, where man has never journeyed, the
whisper comes again and again: " Something
hidden. Go and find it."

People sometimes say to the explorer, ' ' There
is no sense of going to those strange lands
where you cannot live. No good nor gold ever
yet came from No-Man's Land."

But the men who went into the jungles of
darkest Africa said, "As long as there is some-
thing hidden we must go to find it." And the
men who went into the still, white, frozen lands
of the North said : "There is no truth that can
stay untouched. When we know the secrets
of the North and the South, we shall the better
understand the East and the West."

The whisper, "Something hidden," came to
Robert Falcon Scott when he was a little boy
in Devonshire, England. Con, as he was called,
never tired of hearing the tales of Sir Walter

82

CAPTAIN SCOTT

Raleigh, and of Sir Francis Drake, who sailed
the seas and found a new world for England
and sent his drum back to Devon where it was
hung on the old sea-wall to show that the great
days of the past would surely live again.

"You must take my drum" (Drake said),

"To the old sea-wall at home,
And if ever you strike that drum," he said,

"Why, strike me blind, I '11 come !

"If England needs me, dead

Or living, I '11 rise that day !
I '11 rise from the darkness under the sea

Ten thousand miles awayl"

The Devonshire men were sure that the brave
spirit of Drake would come back in some true
English heart whenever the time of need came.
They even whispered when they told how Nel-
son won his great victory at Trafalgar,

"It was the spirit of Sir Francis Drake."

When Con heard these tales, and the stories
of his own father and uncles who were captains
in England's navy, he knew it was true that the
spirit of a brave man does not die.

Sometimes when he was thinking of these
things and wondering about the "something
hidden" that the future had in store for him,

83

HEROES OF TO-DAY

his father would have to call him three or four
times before he could wake him from his dream.
"Old Mooney," his father called him then, and
he shook his head.

" Remember, son," he would say, "an hour
of doing is better than a life of dreaming. You
must wake up and stir about in this world, and
prove that you have it in you to be a man."

How do you think that the delicate boy, with
the narrow chest and the dreamy blue eyes,
whom his father called * ' Old Mooney, ' ' grew into
the wide-awake, practical lad who became, a
few years later, captain of the naval cadets on
the training ship Britannia?

"I must learn to command this idle, dreamy
'Old Mooney' before I can ever command a
ship," he said to himself. So he gave himself
orders in earnest.

When he wanted to lie in bed an extra half
hour, it was, "Up, sir! 'Up and doing,' is the
word!" And out he would jump with a laugh
and a cheer for the new day.

When he felt like hugging the fire with a book
on his knees he would say, ' ' Out, sir ! Get out
in the open air and show what you 're made

84

CAPTAIN SCOTT

of!" Then he would race for an hour or two
with his dog, a big Dane, over the downs, to
come back in a glow ready for anything. And
so the man who was to command others became
master of himself. There came a time when a
strong, brave man was needed to take command
of the ship Discovery, that was to sail over un-
explored seas to the South Pole. And Kobert
Falcon Scott, then a lieutenant in the royal navy,
who had long dreamed of going forth where
ships and men had never been and find the
"something hidden" in strange far-off lands,
found his dream had come true. He was put in
command of that ship.

Three years were spent in that terrible land
where

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled —

in the fierce winds that swept over those great
death-white wastes.

After this time of hardship and plucky en-
durance it was hard to have to return without
having reached the South Pole. But he came
back with so much of deepest interest and value

85

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to report about the unknown country, that those
who had given their money to provide for the
expedition said: "The voyage has really been
a success. Captain Scott must go again under
better conditions with the best help and equip-
ment possible."

It was some time, however, before Captain
Scott could be spared to go on that second and
last voyage to the South Pole. This man who
knew all about commanding ships and men was
needed to help with the great battleships of the
navy. Five years had passed before plans
were ready for the greatest voyage of all.

When it was known that Captain Scott was to
set out' on another expedition, eight thousand
men volunteered to go as members of the party.
It was splendid to think how much real interest
there was in the work and to know how much
true bravery and fine spirit of adventure there
is in the men of our every-day world, but it was
hard to choose wisely out of so many the sixty
men to make up the party.

They needed, of course, officers of the navy,
besides Captain Scott, to help plan and direct,
a crew of able seamen, firemen, and stokers to

86

Pl,,,t,, k,i llr-.i-n tin*.

Captain Robert F. Scott

CAPTAIN SCOTT

run the ship, and doctors and stewards to take
care of the men. Besides these, they wanted
men of science who would be able to investigate
in the right way the plants, animals, rocks, ice,
ocean currents, and winds of that strange part
of the earth; and an artist able to draw and
to take the best kind of photographs and mov-
ing pictures.

The ship chosen for this voyage was the
Terra Nova, the largest and strongest whaler
that could be found. Whalers are ships used
in whale-fishing, which are built expressly to
make their way through the floating ice of
Arctic seas.

The Terra Nova was a stout steamer carry-
ing full sail, so that the winds might help in
sending her on her way, thus saving coal when-
ever possible. The great difficulty was, of
course, the carrying of sufficient supplies for a
long time and for many needs.

With great care each smallest detail was
worked out. There were three motor sledges,
nineteen ponies, and thirty-three dogs to trans-
port supplies. There was material for put-
ting up huts and tents. There were sacks of

89

HEROES OF TO-DAY

coal, great cans of oil and petrol (gasoline) ; and
tons of boxes of provisions, such as pemmican,
biscuit, butter, sugar, chocolate — things that
would not spoil and which would best keep men
strong and warm while working hard in a cold
country. There were fur coats, fur sleeping
bags, snow shoes, tools of all sorts, precious in-
struments, books, and many other things, each
of which was carefully considered for they
were going where no further supplies of any
sort were to be had.

On June 15, 1910, the Terra Nova sailed from
Wales, and on November 26 left New Zealand
for the great adventure.

If the men had been superstitious they would
have been sure that a troublous time was ahead,
for almost immediately a terrible storm broke.
Great waves swept over the decks, the men had
to work with buckets and pumps to bale out the
engine room, while boxes and cases went bump-
ing about on the tossing ship, endangering the
lives of men and animals, and adding to the noise
and terror of the blinding, roaring tempest.

But through it all the men never lost their
spirits. Scott led in the singing of chanties, as

90

CAPTAIN SCOTT

they worked hour after hour to save the ship
and its precious cargo.

At last they came out on a calm sea where the
sun shone on blue waves dotted here and there
with giant ice-bergs, like great floating palaces,
agleam with magic light and color, beautiful
outposts of the icy world they were about to
enter.

You know that the seasons in the South Arc-
tic regions are exactly opposite to ours. Christ-
mas comes in the middle of their summer — the
time of the long day when the sun never drops
below the horizon. Their winter, when they get
no sunlight for months, comes during the time
we are having spring and summer.

It was Scott's plan to sail as far as the ship
could go during the time of light, build a com-
fortable hut for winter quarters, then go ahead
with sledges and carry loads of provisions, leav-
ing them in depots along the path of their jour-
ney south, which was to begin with the coming
of the next long day.

Patient watchfulness, not only by the man in
the crow's nest, but on the part of all hands,
was needed to guide the ship through the great

91

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

masses of ice that pressed closer and closer
about, as if they longed to seize and keep it for-
ever in their freezing hold.

At last in January they came within sight of
Mt. Terror, a volcano on Boss Island, which
marked the place where they must land. It was
strange and terrible, but most beautiful, to see
the fire rise from that snowy mountain in the
great white world they had come to explore.
The ship could go no farther south because
there stretched away from the shore of the
island the great Ice Barrier, an enormous ice
cap rising above the sea fifty or sixty feet and
extending for 150,000 square miles.

Scott came, you remember, knowing well what
lay before him. To reach the South Pole he
must travel from his winter camp on Boss
Island, 424 miles over the barrier, climb 125
miles over a monster glacier, and then push his
way over 353 more miles of rough ice on a lofty,
wind-swept plain. The whole journey south-
ward and back to the winter hut covered about
1,850 miles.

As they could not count at most on more than
150 days in the year when marching would be

92

CAPTAIN SCOTT

possible, this meant that they must make over
ten miles a day during the time of daylight.
Scott knew how hard this must be in that land of
fierce winds and sudden blizzards, when the
blinding, drifting snow made all marching out
of the question. But there was nothing of the
dreamer about him now; he carefully worked
out his plans and prepared for every emer-
gency.

After finding a good place to land and build
the hut for the winter camp where it would be
sheltered from the worst winds, they spent eight
days unloading the ship, which then sailed away
along the edge of the barrier with a part of the
men, to find out how things were to the east of
them.

Captain Scott and his men had an exciting
time, I can tell you, carrying their heavy boxes
and packing cases across the ice to the beach.
Great killer whales, twenty feet long, came
booming along under them, striking the ice with
their backs, making it rock dizzily and split into
wide cracks, over which the men had to jump to
save their lives and their precious stores.

While part of the company was building the
93

HEROES OF TO-DAY

hut and making it comfortable for the long dark
winter, Captain Scott and a group of picked men
began the work of going ahead and planting
stores at depots along the way south. They
would place fuel and boxes of food under canvas
cover, well planted to secure it against the wind,
and mark the spot by a high cairn, or mound,
made of blocks of ice. This mound was topped
with upright skis or dark packing boxes, which
could be seen as black specks miles away in that
white world. At intervals along the trail they
would erect other cairns to mark the way over
the desert of snow. Then back they went to the
hut and the winter of waiting before the march.

How do you suppose they spent the long weeks
of darkness ? Why, they had a wonderful time !
Each man was studying with all his might about
the many strange things he had found in that
land.

Wilson, who was Scott's best friend, gave
illustrated lectures about the water birds he
had found near there, the clumsy penguins who
came tottering up right in the face of his cam-
era as if they were anxious to have their pic-
tures taken. He had pictures, too, of their

94

CAPTAIN SCOTT

nests and their funny, floundering babies.
There were also pictures of seals peeping up
at him out of their breathing-holes in the ice,
where he had gone fishing and had caught all
sorts of curious sea creatures.

Other men were examining pieces of rock and
telling the story which they told of the history
of the earth ages and ages ago when the land
of that Polar world was joined with the conti-
nents of Africa and South America. Evans
gave lectures on surveying, and Scott told about
the experiences of his earlier voyage and ex-
plained the use of his delicate instruments.

Of course they took short exploring trips
about, and sometimes when the moon was up,
or, perhaps, in the scant twilight of midday,
they played a game of football in the snow.

At last the sun returned, and the time came
for the great journey about the first of Novem-
ber, just a year after they had left New Zea-
land.

They had not gone far when it was proved
that the motor sledges were useless, as the en-
gines were not fitted for working in such in-
tense cold. So, sorrowfully they had to leave

95

HEROES OF TO-DAY

them behind, and make ponies and dogs do all
the work of hauling.

Then began a time of storms when blizzard
followed blizzard. It seemed that they had met
the wild spirit of all tempests in his snowy fast-
ness, and as if he were striving to prove that
the will of the strongest man must give way
before the savage force of wind and weather.
But there was something in the soul of these
men that could not be conquered by any hard-
ship— something that would never give up.

11 The soul of a true man is stronger than any-
thing that can happen to him," said Captain
Scott.

It seemed as if this journey was made to
prove that. And it did prove it.

Misfortune followed misfortune. The sturdy
ponies could not stand the dangers. Some of
them slipped and fell into deep chasms in the
ice; others suffered so that the only kind thing
was to put them out of their pain. The men
went along then up the fearful climb across the
glacier, with just the help of the dogs who
pulled the sledges carrying provisions. One of
the men became very ill, which delayed them

96

CAPTAIN SCOTT

further. And ever the dreadful wind raged
about them.

They reached a point about 170 miles from
the Pole on New Year's day. Here Scott de-
cided to send two members of his party back
with the sick man and the dog sledge. They
were, of course, disappointed, but realized it was
for the best.

After leaving part of their provisions in a
new depot to feed them on the way back, Captain
Scott and four men, Wilson, Gates, Bowers, and
Evans, went on the last march to the Pole with
lighter loads which they dragged on a hand
sledge. This is what Scott wrote in the letter
sent back by his men :

* * A last note from a hopeful position. I think
it 's going to be all right. We have a fine party
going forward and all arrangements are going
well."

How did the way seem to the men who still
went on and on, now in the awful glare of the
sun on the glistening ice, now in the teeth of a
terrific gale? Here are some lines written by
Wilson which may tell you something of what
they felt:

97

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

The silence was deep with a breath like sleep
As our sledge runners slid on the snow,

And the fateful fall of our fur-clad feet
Struck mute like a silent blow.

And this was the thought the silence wrought,

As it scorched and froze us through,
For the secrets hidden are all forbidden

Till God means man to know.
We might be the men God meant should know

The heart of the Barrier snow,
In the heat of the sun, and the glow,

And the glare from the glistening floe,
As it scorched and froze us through and through

With the bite of the drifting snow.

But still they pushed on and on, carrying sup-
plies and their precious instruments, together
with the records of their observations and ex-
periences, until at last the goal was reached.

The South Pole at last! But here after all
they had dared and endured another great trial
awaited them just at the moment of seeming
success. There at the goal toward which they
had struggled with such high hopes was a tent
and a mound over which floated the flag of Nor-
way. The Norse explorer, Amundsen, had
reached the Pole first. A letter was left telling
of his work of discovery. He had happened on
a route shielded from the terrific winds against

98

CAPTAIN SCOTT

which Scott had fought his way mile by mile,
and had arrived at the Pole a month earlier.

Now, indeed, Scott showed that "the soul of
a brave man is stronger than anything that can
happen to him." Cheerfully he built a cairn
near the spot to hold up their Union Jack, which
flapped sadly in the freezing air as if to re-
proach them with not having set it as the first
flag at the Farthest South of the earth. Then
before they started back with the news of
Amundsen 's success, Scott wrote these lines in
his diary:

"Well, we have turned our back now on the
goal of our ambition and must face 800 miles of
solid dragging — and good-by to most of the day
dreams."

But it was for Scott to show the world that
defeat might be turned into the greatest victory
of all. When you hear any one say that a man
is too weak or fearful to bear hardship and ill-
success to the end, think of Captain Scott and
say, ' ' The brave soul is stronger than anything
that can happen."

On he struggled, on and on, though delayed
again and again by blizzards that raged about

99

HEROES OF TO-DAY

in the most terrible fury as if determined to
make this little party give up the fight. At last
they came, weak and nearly frozen (for the sup-
plies of food and fuel had run short), almost
within sight of a provision camp where com-
fort and plenty awaited them. At this moment
came the most terrible storm of all, that lasted
for more than a week.

One morning Lieutenant Oates, who was ill
and feared that his friends might lose their last
chance of reaching safety by staying to care
for him, walked out into the blizzard with these
words :

"I am just going outside and may be some
time."

Scott wrote that they "realized he was walk-
ing to his death and tried to dissuade him, but
knew it was the act of a brave man and an Eng-
lish gentleman. We all hope to meet the end
with a similar spirit," he added.

A little later Scott wrote in his diary :

11 Every day we have been ready to start for
our depot eleven miles away, but outside the
door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling
drift. I do not think we can hope for any better

100

CAPTAIN SCOTT

things now. We shall stick it out to the end,
but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end
cannot be far."

Eight months after when a rescue party suc-
ceeded in reaching the tent, they found the
bodies of Wilson and Bowers lying with their
sleeping bags closed over their heads. Near
them was Captain Scott, with the flaps of his
sleeping bag thrown back. Under his shoulder
were his note-books and letters to those at home,
which he had written up to the very last when
the pencil slipped from his fingers. His thought
in dying was not for himself but for those that
would be left to grieve.

On the spot where they died, their friends left
the bodies of these brave men covered with the
canvas of their tent, and over them they piled
up a great cairn of ice in which was placed a
wooden cross made of snow-shoes. On the
cross were carved these words of a great poet,
which no one better than Captain Scott had made
living words :

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. "

Now we can see why this tale of Captain Scott
101

HEROES OF TO-DAY

is truly an undying story. As long as true
hearts beat those words will find an echo, and
also those other words which he so nobly proved
by his life and death :

"The soul of a brave man is stronger than
anything that can happen to him. ' '

102

A MODERN VIKING: JACOB BUS

I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay;
And fight my fight in the patient modern way.

SIDNEY LANIBIL

WOULD you like to hear about a viking of
our own time? Listen to the story of
this Northman, and see if you will not say that
the North Sea country can still send forth as
staunch and fearless men as those who sailed in
their dragon ships the " whale roads" of the
uncharted seas, found a new world and forgot
about it long before Columbus dreamed his
dream.

Near the Danish coast where the sea and the
low-lying fields grapple hand to hand in every
storm, and where the waves at flood tide thun-
der against the barrows beneath which the old
vikings were buried, is the quaint little town of
Eibe. This is the sea's own country. It seems
as if the people here, who never fear to go
down to the sea in ships, have scorned to pile
up dikes between them and their greatest friend,
who can, in a moment of anger, prove their
greatest enemy. It is as if they said, "We are

105

HEROES OF TO-DAY

of the sea; if it chooses to rise up against us,
who are we to say, * Thus far and no farther ! ' "

There was a boy bora in this town whose name
was Jacob Eiis. The call of the sea-birds was
the first sound he knew; the breath of the sea
was like the breath of life to him. On bright,
blue-and-gold days when the waves danced in
rainbow hues and scattered in snowy foam, his
heart ' ' outdid the sparkling waves in glee. ' ' At
evening, when the sea-fogs settled down over
the shore and land and water seemed one, some-
thing of the thoughtful strength and patience of
that brave little country came into his face.

Many changes had come to the coast since the
sea-rovers of old pulled their pirate galleys on
the beach, took down their square, gaily striped
sails, and gave themselves over to feasting in
the great mead-hall, where the smoking boar's-
flesh was taken from the leaping flames and
seized by the flushed, triumphant warriors,
while skalds chanted loud the joys of battle
and plunder. The quaint little town where
Jacob Riis lived sixty-odd years ago had noth-
ing but the broom-covered barrows and the
changeless ocean that belonged to those wild

106

times, and yet it was quite as far removed from
the customs and interests of to-day.

I wish that I could make you see the narrow
cobblestone streets over which whale-oil lan-
terns swung on creaking iron chains, and the
quaint houses with their tiled roofs where the
red-legged storks came in April to build their
nests. The stillness was unbroken by the snort
of the locomotive and the shrill clamor of steam-
boat and steam factory whistles. The people
still journeyed by stagecoach, carried tinder-
boxes in place of matches, and penknives to
mend their quill pens. The telegraph was re-
garded with suspicion, as was the strange oil
from Pennsylvania that was taken out of the
earth. Such things could not be safe, and pru-
dent people would do well to have none of them.

In this town, where mill-wheels clattered com-
fortably in the little stream along which roses
nodded over old garden walls and where night-
watchmen went about the streets chanting the
hours, all the people were neighbors. There
were no very rich and few very poor. How
Jacob hated the one ramshackle old house by
the dry moat which had surrounded the great

107

HEROES OF TO-DAY

castle of the mighty Valdemar barons in feudal
days! This place seemed given over to dirt,
rats, disease, and dirty, rat-like children.
Jacob's friends called it Bag Hall, and said it
was a shame that such an ugly, ill-smelling pile
should spoil the neighborhood of Castle Hill,
where they loved to play among the tall grass
and swaying reeds of the moat.

Bag Hall came to fill a large place in Jacob 's
thoughts. It was the grim shadow of his bright
young world. Surely the world as God had
made it was a place of open sky, fresh life-giv-
ing breezes, and rolling meadows of dewy, fra-
grant greenness. How did it happen that peo-
ple could get so far away from all that made
life sweet and wholesome? How had they lost
their birthright?

As Jacob looked at the gray, dirty children
of Bag Hall it seemed to him that they had
never had a chance to be anything better.
"What should I have been if I had always lived
in such a place?" he said to himself.

One Christmas, Jacob's father gave him a
mark, — a silver coin like our quarter, — which
was more money than the boy had ever had be-

108

Jaeob A. "Riis

JACOB BUS

fore. Now it seemed to him that he might be
able to do something to help make things better
in Bag Hall. He ran to the tenement — to the
room of the most miserable family who lived
there.

"Here," he said to a man who took the money
as if he were stunned, "1 11 divide my Christ-
mas mark with you, if you '11 just try to clean
things up a bit, especially the children, and give
them a chance to live like folks. ' '

The twelve-year-old boy little thought that the
great adventure of his life really began that day
at Bag Hall. But years after when he went
about among the tenements of New York, trying
to make things better for the children of Mul-
berry Bend and Cherry Street, he remembered
where the long journey had begun.

It was no wonder that Christmas stirred the
heart of this young viking, and made him long
for real deeds. Christmas in Bibe was a time
of joy and good-will to all. A lighted candle
was put in the window of every farm-house to
cheer the wayfarer with the message that no-
body is a stranger at Christmas. Even the
troublesome sparrows were not forgotten. A

111

HEROES OF TO-DAY

sheaf of rye was set up in the snow to make them
the Christmas-tree they would like best. The
merry Christmas elf, the "Jule-nissen," who
lived in the attic, had a special bowl of rice and
milk put out for him. Years afterward, when
this Danish lad was talking to a crowd of New
York boys and girls, he said, with a twinkle
in his eyes :

"I know if no one else ever really saw the
Nissen that our black cat had made his acquaint-
ance. She looked very wise and purred most
knowingly next morning."

If Christmas brought the happiest times, the
northwest storms in autumn brought the most
thrilling experiences of Jacob 's boyhood. Then,
above the moaning of the wind, the muttered
anger of the waves, and the crash of falling
tiles, came the weird singing of the big bell in
the tower of the Domkirke — the cathedral, you
know.

After such a night the morning would dawn
on a strange world where storm-lashed waves
covered the meadows and streets for miles
about, and on the causeway, high above the
flood-level, cattle, sheep, rabbits, grouse, and

112

JACOB RIIS

other frightened creatures of the fields huddled
together in pitiful groups.

One night, when the flood had risen before the
mail-coach came in and the men of the town
feared for the lives of the passengers, Jacob
went out with the rescue-party to the road
where the coach must pass. Scarcely able to
stand against the wind, he struggled along on
the causeway where, in pitchy blackness, with
water to his waist and pelting spray lashing his
face like the sting of a whip, he groped along,
helping to lead the frightened horses to the
lights of the town a hundred yards away. It
was hard that night to get warmed through;
but the boy's heart glowed, for had not the
brusk old Amtmand, the chief official of the
country, seized him by the arm and said, while
rapping him smartly on the shoulders with his
cane, as if, in other days, he would have
knighted him, "Strong boy, be a man yet!"

Jacob's father, who was master of the town
school, was keenly disappointed when this alert,
promising son declared his wish to give up the
ways of book-learning and master the carpen-
ter's trade. The boy felt that building houses

113

HEROES OF TO-DAY

for people to live in would be far better than
juggling with words and all the unreal problems
with which school and school-books seemed to
deal. Thinking that it would be useless to try
to force his son into a life distasteful to him,
the father swallowed his disappointment and
sent him to serve his apprenticeship with a
great builder in Copenhagen. The boy should,
he determined, have the best start in his chosen
calling that it was in his power to give him.

Soon after his arrival in the capital, Jacob
went to meet his student brother at the palace
of Charlottenborg, where an art exhibition was
being held. Seeing that he was a stranger and
ill at ease, a tall, handsome gentleman paused on
his way up the grand staircase and offered to
act as guide. As they went on together, the
gentleman asked the boy about himself and lis-
tened with ready sympathy to his eager story
of his life in the old town, and what he hoped
to do in the new life of the city. When they
parted Jacob said heartily:

" People are just the same friendly neighbors
in Copenhagen that they are in little Eibe — jolly
good Danes everywhere, just like you, sir 1 ' 7

114

JACOB BUS

The stranger smiled and patted him on the
shoulder in a way more friendly still. Just at
that moment they came to a door where a red-
liveried lackey stood at attention. He bowed
low as they entered and Jacob, bowing back,
turned to his new friend with a delighted smile :

11 There is another example of what I mean,
sir," he said. "Would you believe it, now, that
I have never seen that man before?"

The gentleman laughed, and, pointing to a
door, told Jacob he would find his brother there.
While the boy happily recounted his adventures,
particularly the story of his kindly guide, the
handsome gentleman passed through the room
and nodded to him with his twinkling smile.

"There is my jolly gentleman," said Jacob,
as he nodded back.

His brother jumped to his feet and bowed low.

"Good gracious!" he said, when the stranger
had passed out. "You don't mean to say lie
was your guide? Why, boy, that was the
King!"

So Jacob learned that in Denmark even a
king, whom he had always thought of as wear-
ing a jeweled crown and a trailing robe of vel-

115

HEROES OF TO-DAY

vet and ermine held by dainty silken pages,
could go about in a plain blue overcoat like any
other man, and be just as simple and neighborly.

In Copenhagen the king of his fairy-book
world was a neighbor, too. Hans Christian An-
dersen was a familiar figure on the streets at
that time. Jacob and his companions often met
him walking under the lindens along the old
earthen walls that surrounded the city.

" Is n't he an ugly duck, though !" said Jacob
one evening, as the awkward old man, with his
long, ungainly neck and limbs and enormous
hands and feet, came in sight. Then the merry
young fellows strung themselves along in In-
dian file, each in turn bowing low as he passed,
and saying with mock reverence, "Good eve-
ning, Herr Professor!"

But when the gentle old man, with the child's
heart, seized their hands in his great grasp and
thanked them delightedly, they slunk by shame-
facedly, and, while they chuckled a little, avoided
meeting each other's eyes. For in their hearts
they loved the old man whose stories had
charmed their childhood, and they knew that the

116

JACOB RIIS

spirit within the lank, awkward body was alto-
gether lovely.

All the time that Jacob was working with
hammer and saw, he was, like that first Jacob
of whom we read, serving for his Rachel. From
the time he was a clumsy lad of twelve he knew
that his playmate Elizabeth, with the golden
curls and the fair, gentle looks, was the princess
of his own fairy-tale. Like all good fairy-tales,
it simply had to turn out happily.

When his apprenticeship was over and he had
learned all about building houses for people to
live in, he hurried at once to Ribe to build his
own house. It seemed, however, that nobody
realized that he was the hero who was to marry
the princess. Why, Elizabeth's father owned
the one factory in town, and they lived in a big
house, which some people called a "castle."
Small chance that he would let his pretty daugh-
ter marry a carpenter!

Since working faithfully for long, busy years
had not brought him to his goal, Jacob threw
aside his tools and decided to seek his fortune
in a new country. In America, surely, a true

117

HEROES OF TO-DAY

man might come into his own. The days of high
adventure were not dead. He would win fame
and fortune, and then return in triumph to the
old town — and to Elizabeth.

It was a beautiful spring morning — surely a
prophecy of fair beginnings — when this young
viking sailed into New York Harbor. The
dauntless Northmen, who pushed across the
seas and discovered America, could not have
thrilled more at the sight of their Vineland than
did this Dane of our own day when he saw the
sky-line of the great city. This must indeed be
a new world of opportunity for strong men.

It took only a day of wandering about the
crowded streets, however, to convince this
seeker that a golden chance is as hard to find in
the New York of to-day as gold was in those
disillusioning days of the early explorers. The
golden chance, it seemed, was to be won, if at
all, as is the precious metal — only after intel
ligent prospecting and patient digging.

How utterly alone he felt in that crowd of
hurrying strangers ! Very different it all was
from his cozy little country where every one was
a neighbor, even the king himself.

118

The Jacob A. Riis settlement, Henry Street, New York

JACOB KIIS

Out of sheer loneliness and the desire to be-
long to somebody he threw in his lot with a
gang of men who were being gathered together
to work in a mining-camp on the Allegheny
River. Perhaps the West was his Promised
Land, and Pennsylvania would be a start on the
way.

The young carpenter was set to work building
houses for the workers in the mines. He could
not content himself, however, in this shut-in
country. To one used to the vastness of a level
land stretching as far as eye could see, it seemed
as if the hills and forests hedged him in on
every side — as if he could not breathe. To ease
the restlessness of his homesick spirit, he de-
termined to try his fortune at coal-mining.
One day was enough of that. In his inexperi-
ence he failed to brace the roof properly, and a
great piece of rock came down on him, knocking
the lamp from his cap and leaving him stunned
and in utter darkness. When at last he suc-
ceeded in groping his way out, it was as if he
had come back from the dead. The daylight
had never before seemed so precious. Nothing
could have induced him to try coal-mining again.

121

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

At this time, 1870, news came of the war be-
tween Germany and France. It was expected,
moreover, that Denmark would come to the as-
sistance of the French, since only a few years
before, in 1864, Germany had seized some of the
choicest territory of the little North Sea king-
dom— Schleswig-Holstein, the section through
which the important Kiel Canal has been
built. Every Dane longed to avenge the wrong.
Jacob Kiis at once left his tools and his work.
He would win glory as a soldier.

He reached New York with but a single cent
in his pocket, only to find that no one was fitting
out volunteer companies to send to France.
Here he was longing to offer his life for the
cause, and it was treated like a worthless trifle.
Clothes and every cherished possession that his
little trunk contained were soon pawned to pay
for food and a roof over his head.

There followed months when the young man
wandered about the great city, homeless,
hungry, vainly seeking employment. Too proud
to beg, he yet accepted night after night a plate
of meat and rolls which a French cook in a
large restaurant handed him from a basement

122

JACOB RIIS

window. It seemed as if that was a part of the
debt France owed her would-be soldier.

He was part of a weary army of discouraged
men hunting for work. He knew what it meant
to sleep on park benches, in doorways, in empty
wagons, and even on the flat stone slabs of a
graveyard. There were, in New York, friends
of his family who might have helped him, but
he was too proud to make himself known in his
present sorry plight. He even destroyed the
letters to them, lest in a moment of weakness
he might be tempted to appeal to their charity.

This time of hardship, however, was destined
to bear fruit. Jacob Biis came to know the
shadows of the great city — all the miserable al-
leys and narrow courts of the East Side slums.
Then and there, weak and starving though
he was, the boy who had given his Christmas
money to help Rag Hall vowed that he would
some day work to remove those plague-spots
from the city's life. "How true it is," he said,
' 'that one half of the world doesn't know how
the other half lives I If they only knew, things
would be different."

At last the chance for which he had been long-
123

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ing came. Hearing that a new reporter was
wanted by the News Association, he applied for
the position. After looking the haggard ap-
plicant over for a moment doubtfully, the edi-
tor was moved to give him a trial. The starv-
ing man was sent to report a political banquet.
When he turned in his "copy" at the office
the editor said briefly:

"You will do. Take that desk and report at
ten every morning, sharp."

So began his life as a reporter.

Perhaps you know something of his success as
a newspaper man. He knew how to gather
news ; and he knew how to find the words that
make bare facts live. The days and nights of
privation had been rich in experience. He was
truly "a part of all that he had met." Some-
thing of his intimate acquaintance with all sorts
and conditions of existence, something of his
warm, understanding sympathy for every vari-
ety of human joy and sorrow, crept into his
work. Besides, the young man had boundless
enthusiasm and tireless industry.

"That chap just seems to eat work," said his
fellow-reporters.

124

JACOB BUS

One day a very special letter came from Den-
mark, which told him that his gentle Elizabeth
was quite convinced that he was indeed the
prince of her life story. So, as it turned out, he
didn't have to make a fortune before he was
able to bring her to share his home in New York.
With her it seemed that he brought the best of
the old life into the new —

Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people.

The only homesick times that he knew now
were the days when his work as a reporter took
him to the streets of the miserable tenements.
All his soul cried out against these places where
the poor, the weak, and the wicked, the old, the
sick, and helpless babies were all herded to-
gether in damp, dingy rooms where the purify-
ing sunlight never entered. During his years
of wandering in search of work he had gained
an intimate knowledge of such conditions. He
knew what poverty meant and how it felt.
Afterward, when he saw this hideous squalor, he
shared it. These people were his neighbors.

"Over against the tenements of our cities,"
he said, "ever rise in my mind the fields, the

125

HEROES OF TO-DAY

woods, God's open sky, as accusers and wit-
nesses that his temple is being defiled and man
dwarfed in body and soul."

He knew that the one way to remove such
evils and to force people to put up decent houses
for the poor was to bring the facts out in the
open. When he described what he had seen, the
words seemed to mean little to many of the
people that he wanted to reach. Then he hit
upon the plan of taking pictures. These pic-
tures served to illustrate some very direct talks
he gave in the churches. Later, many of them
made an important part of his book, "How the
Other Half Lives."

" These people are your neighbors," said
Jacob Eiis. "It is the business of the fortunate
half of those who live in our great cities to find
out how the other half lives. No one can live to
himself or die to himself —

If you will not grub for your neighbor's weeds,
In your own green garden you '11 find the seeds.' "

Through his persistent campaigning, one of
the very worst parts of New York, known as
Mulberry Bend, a veritable network of alleys

126

JACOB RIIS

which gave hiding to misery and crime untold,
was bought by the city, the buildings torn down,
and the spot converted into a public park.

Several years later, when Eoosevelt was
President, he asked Mr. Riis to investigate the
conditions of streets and alleys in Washington.
It developed that within three squares of the
Capitol there was a system of alleys honey-
combing a single block where a thousand people
were crowded together under conditions that
made a hotbed of misery, crime, and disease.
The good citizens of the National Capital, who
had read with horror about the evils of New
York and Chicago, were rudely shaken out of
their self-complacency. That square is now one
of Washington's parks.

Jacob Riis early learned the power of facts.
His training as a reporter taught him that. He
was also willing to Work early and late, when
the need arose, to gather them. At one time
when there was a cholera scare in New York, he
happened to look over the Health Department
analysis of the water from the Croton River,
and noticed that it was said to contain "a trace
of nitrites. "

127

HEROES OF TO-DAY

"What does that mean!" he asked of the
chemist.

The reply was more learned than enlighten-
ing. The reporter was not satisfied. He car-
ried his inquiry farther and discovered that
"nitrites'* meant that the water had been con-
taminated by sewage from towns above New
York. Riis then took his camera and explored
not only the Croton River to its source, but also
every stream that emptied into it, taking pic-
tures that proved in the most convincing way
the dangers of the city. As a result, money
was appropriated to buy a strip of land along
the streams, wide enough to protect the people's
water-supply.

Another great work that Jacob Riis was en-
abled to carry through had its beginnings in that
stormy chapter of his life when he found him-
self a vagrant among vagrants. He learned at
first hand what the police lodging-houses for the
homeless were like. At that time this charity
was left in the hands of the police, who had
neither the ability nor the desire to handle these
cases wisely and humanely and to meet the prob-
lems of helping people to help themselves.

128

Jacob Kiis worked shoulder to shoulder with
Theodore Eoosevelt, who was then police com-
missioner of New York, to make the organized
charity of the city an intelligent agency for re-
lieving suffering and putting on their feet again
those who were, for some reason, "down and
out." Many were brought back to wholesome
living through the realization that they had
* * neighbors ' ' who cared.

In the same way he worked for parks and
playgrounds for the children. He saw that the
city spoils much good human material.

"We talk a great deal about city toughs," he
says in his autobiography. "In nine cases out
of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose
possibilities have all been smothered by the
slum. With better opportunities they might
have been heroes."

Many honors came to Jacob Ens. He was
known as a "boss reporter"; his books gave
him a nation-wide fame; the King of Denmark
sent him the Crusaders' Cross, the greatest
honor his native land could bestow; President
Eoosevelt called him the "most useful Ameri-
can" of his day. But I think what meant more

129

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to him than any or all of these things was the
real affection of his many "neighbors," espe-
cially the children.

Many times he gathered together beys and
girls from the streets to enjoy a day with him in
the country.

"This will help until we can give them trees
and grass in their slum," he would say, "and
then there will be no slum." His eyes grew
very tender as he added, ' ' No, there will be no
slum ; it will be a true City Beautiful — and the
fairest blossoms there will be the children."

Biis called the story of his life, * ' The Making
of an American." While his life was in the
making he helped to make many others. He
was in truth a maker of Americans.

Do you not think that he lived a life as truly
adventurous as the vikings of old — this viking
of our own day? They lived for deeds of dar-
ing and plunder; he lived for deeds every whit
as brave — and for service.

130

A PIONEER OF THE OPEN:
EDWARD L. TEUDEAU

Oh, toiling hands of mortals! Oh, unwearied feet,
traveling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to
you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and
but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry
the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own
blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than
to arrive, and the true success is to labor.

STEVENSON: El Dorado.

A PIONEER OF THE OPEN

WHEN you read in your history the stories
of the men who discovered America, did
you ever think that not one of them found that
for which he searched when he sailed unknown
seas and braved the perils of an unbroken wil-
derness? Columbus tried to find a sea-way to
the Indies, and stumbled upon a new world.
Henry Hudson, in seeking a short cut to the
Pacific, found New York. De Soto, hunting in
vain for gold, was little comforted by the sight
of the muddy waters of the Mississippi. And
so with Ponce de Leon, Balboa, La Salle, and
all the rest. Each journeyed in search of one
thing and found another.

Nor did any of these discoverers know what
he had found. De Soto had no vision of great
plains of golden grain, food for millions of
men, along the shores of his river. Henry Hud-
son never dreamed of the city of New York.
These men only blazed the trail. It was for

133

HEROES OF TO-DAY

those who came after to understand and use
what they had found.

Each year men were finding, and helping oth-
ers to find, a new land. Some of these men
were the pioneers who cleared the ground and
planted farms ; some were those who built roads
and bridges; some were those who took iron,
coal, and oil from the ground ; some were those
who taught the children of the new land in the
little bare school-houses. All of these people
helped to discover our America,

Did you know that the work of discovery is
still going on? Ten years from now many
changes will have come to pass; in a hundred
years a new world will have been found.

This is the story of one of the greatest discov-
erers of our day — the story of a man who found
a new world in the North Woods of New York.
But like the other discoverers, he searched for
one thing and found another, and he spent many
years of patient work in trying to understand
and use in the best way what he had found.

Edward Livingston Trudeau was born with
a love of the woods and the life of the open.

134

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

In Ms father, Dr. James Trudeau, the call of
the wild was so strong that again and again
he would leave the city and his work to lose
himself in the great forests of the West far
from the world of men. He used to say that it
was only when he could lose himself in this way
that he seemed to find himself. Once he lived
for two years with the Osage Indians, learning
their woodcraft and their skill in riding and
hunting. In 1841 he went with Fremont, the
explorer, on his great expedition to the Rocky
Mountains. And it was never hard for his
friend Audubon, the famous naturalist, to per-
suade him to shut up his office and fare forth
with him into the wilds. He was always rest-
less and ill at ease within walls ; only when out
under the open sky did he feel fully alive.

Of course, this uncertain, wandering life
ruined his chances of success in his profession.
He gave up his office in New York, and, leaving
his children with their grandfather, returned to
his earlier home in New Orleans, thinking that
perhaps it would be easier to settle down there
to a more regular and ordered life. But he was

135

HEROES OF TO-DAY

never able to resist for long at a time the crav-
ing for the freedom of the great outdoors.

Edward Trudeau's childhood was spent in
large cities — New York first, and then Paris;
he never knew his father, and yet he shared his
strong love for a wild, outdoor life. He used
often to say that it was strange how the trait
which in his father had wrecked his career as a
physician saved the life of his son, at a time
when he was so ill that he could live only in
the open air, and really led to his success as a
doctor by showing him that fresh air and sun-
shine are often a sure cure where medicines
fail.

Did you know that only a very few years ago
many people were afraid to open their win-
dows? That was the time when so many were
dying of tuberculosis that it was called "the
great white plague." It was as mysterious and
terrible as the Black Death, which, we read, once
carried off half the people of England, because
this "white plague" was an enemy that never
withdrew. No one knew what caused the
trouble, but they thought it must be due to a
chill of some kind, so they carefully shut out

136 '

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

the fresh air. Every child to-day knows that
they were shutting out the one thing that could
cure them. But do you know that it was Ed-
ward Trudeau who taught us that? He was
really the discoverer of the importance of fresh
air as a cure for many ills, and, still better, as a
means of keeping well. Besides this, he lived
the life of a true hero. Listen to his story and
see if you will not say with me that his was as
brave a fight as that of any hero of battle. And
his victory was one in which the whole world
has a share.

Though Edward Trudeau was born with his
father's love of the open, most of his early life,
as we have said, was spent in big cities. When
he was a child of three, his grandfather, Dr.
Berger, a French physician who had earned re-
nown not only in his own country but also in
New York, took him and his older brother to
Paris, where they lived for fifteen years. Here
he was like a wood-bird in a cage, looking at a
strange life and strange people through the
bars.

Sometimes the bits of life he saw were very
gay and fascinating, for this was the time of

137

HEROES OF TO-DAY

the Second Empire, when the capital was al-
ways a-flutter over some occasion of royal pomp
or brilliant celebration. Napoleon III (whom
Victor Hugo wittily dubbed "Napoleon the Lit-
tle" in contrast with his uncle, Napoleon the
Great) tried to make the splendor and glitter of
extravagant display take the place of the true
glory of great deeds. One of his ' ' big brass gen-
erals," who was always quite dazzling in gold
lace and gleaming decorations, lived on the first
floor, immediately below Dr.Berger's apart-
ment, and Edward Trudeau felt, as he watched
from the window this ideal figure of military
power dash up to the porte-cochere on his spir-
ited horse, all splendid, too, in gold trappings,
that here truly was one of the great race of
heroes. He trembled with delight when the
great man took notice of his small, hero-worship-
ing self, and they became friends after a fash-
ion. But General Bazaine was, as events
proved, much more within his capabilities when
sitting tall on a prancing, gold-caparisoned
horse at a royal review of the troops than when
leading the forces of France against the German
army. When the Franco-Prussian War came in

138

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

1870 it was largely through his tactical blunders,
and cowardly treachery, perhaps, that Sedan
was surrounded and the French army obliged to
surrender to the victorious Germans. When
Edward Trudeau read in the papers the news of
the French defeat his heart was sad over the fall
of his boyish idol, but the truth entered his soul
that the real victors of real battles are not al-
ways those magnificent ones who look most un-
conquerable.

Another vivid memory of his childhood days
in Paris brought home the same truth. One
day, as he watched at the window, he was thrilled
to see a gorgeous equerry from the Palais Royal
ride up in state to his door and hand a parcel to
the butler. This package, he learned, contained
the Cross of the Legion of Honor which the em-
peror had sent to his grandfather. Afterward,
he noticed that his grandfather always wore a
little red ribbon in his buttonhole. But when
the small boy questioned him in regard to the
reason for his wearing the decoration, he only
smiled quizzically and said, "Pour faire parler
les curieux, mon enfant" ("To give the curious
a chance to talk, my child"). As for himself,

139

HEROES OF TO-DAY

this modest French physician preferred to let
his deeds alone speak of what he had done.

The small boy who could scarcely remember
the time when he did not live in France and
whose relatives were all French did not forget
for a moment that he was an American. The
toy boats which he sailed in the fountains of the
Tuileries all bore the Stars and Stripes. And
his favorite playmates at the Lycee Bonaparte,
where he went to school, were hardy American
boys whose parents were living in Paris.

During the years at the French school the
vague, inner yearning for a freer, more natural
life, found vent in many pranks and covert rebel-
lion not only against the class routine, but also,
more openly, against the established order of
things on the playground. Here some of the
delicately aristocratic French boys were much
disconcerted by the blunt and wholly effectual
way in which Edward Trudeau and his chums,
the Livingston lads, settled questions by argu-
ment straight from the shoulder.

When he returned to New York at eighteen,
Edward could speak only broken English, but
he felt so truly American that he wondered why

140

EDWARD L. TEUDEAU

his cousins laughed when he said, "Ze English
is so hard a language to prononciate. ' '

Then came his " wander years" in which he
tried, with a deep, unsatisfied longing after he
knew not what, to find his proper niche in life.
Something of the memory of the stirring day
when the American lads in Paris had thrilled
over the news of the capture of the privateer
Alabama by the United States cruiser Kearsage
off the coast of France led him to think that he
wanted to enter the Navy. So he went to a pre-
paratory school at Newport, as the United
States Naval Academy had been, on account of
the war, removed from Annapolis to that city,
together with the historic old ship Constitution,
which furnished quarters for the cadets.

At the very moment when he was prepared to
enter the academy, Fate decided otherwise. His
only brother, Francis, whose delicate health had
always been a cause of much anxiety, became
alarmingly ill. Though Edward was several
years younger, he had always, as far back as
he could remember, tried, at school and on the
playground, to take care of this frail brother.
He learned to know by the signs of the paling

141

HEROES OF TO-DAY

face and blue lips when the weak heart was
missing its proper beat, and he was always at
hand to say: "Steady, old fellow, steady!
Let 's drop out of the game and rest up a bit."

Most of the thrashings that he had dealt out
to the school bullies were given on his brother's
account. But if Frank was not able to hold his
own when it came to fisticuffs, in other encoun-
ters Edward learned to rely on the strong char-
acter and high ideals of this brother, who
seemed a tower of strength when it came to
battles of the spirit against doubts, fears, and
wild gusts of temptation.

Now these two, who were so closely united by
the strong double bond of mutual dependence
and protection, had come to the great parting
of the ways. The white plague had Francis in
its terrible grip. During the last months of the
hopeless struggle Edward watched with him
night and day, drinking strong green tea to keep
himself awake, and, by the doctor 's orders, care-
fully keeping all the windows closed, since the
outside air was supposed to aggravate the pain-
ful cough.

The man who was to cure many by the simple
142

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

means of fresh air learned his first lesson in
that sick-room where he watched the one he
loved best struggle for breath, and where he
himself caught the seeds of the dread disease.
This first great sorrow was really the first stage
on his great journey of discovery — the discov-
ery of a new world of life, restored to many who
believed that they were nearing the "Valley
named of the Shadow. " But how often is it
true that the seeker after El Dorado searches
for one thing and finds another. How often
must the fortunate ones who at last arrive at the
great goal travel by ways they know not.

Edward Trudeau had not yet found his life-
work. He studied for a few months at the
school of mines before he realized that he was
not destined to be an engineer. This was but
one of many false starts. Indeed, his early
path was strewed with so many bits of wreck-
age from his spasmodic trials and failures that
when one of his friends announced to a group at
the Union Club that he had entered the Col-
lege of Physicians and Surgeons, a fellow-mem-
ber said, "I bet five hundred dollars he never
graduates." And not one of the companions

143

HEROES OF TO-DAY

who knew and loved him so well was ready to
take up the bet.

These merry companions of his youth, who
thought they knew Edward Trudeau better than
he knew himself, loved him well; for he ever
had the gift of friendship with man and beast.
Dogs and horses at once felt his comprehending
hand and heart. And as for the human kind —
were they great masters of finance like Edward
H. Harriman, gay young men about town like
the Livingstons, or sturdy mountain guides like
Paul Smith and Fitz-Greene Halleck — all and
each were not only boon companions when the
opportunity served, but lifelong friends whom
neither time nor circumstance could change.
When Dr. Trudeau used to say with feeling,
"No one ever had better friends than I have,"
we always thought, as we looked into his kindly
eyes, so alive with understanding sympathy and
ready cheer, "How true it is that the best way
to win a friend is to be one. ' '

The best friend of all from beginning to end,
however, was Miss Charlotte Beare, who be-
came his wife as soon as he had graduated from
the medical school and had spent six months as

144

riu,ii, tin i I'm. />,

Edward L. Trudeau

EDWAED L. TEUDEAU

house physician in The Strangers' Hospital.
When he wrote, toward the close of his life, a
record of what his experiences had meant, he
gave the book this dedication:

TO MY DEAR WIFE

EVER AT MY SIDE

EVER CHEERFUL AND HOPEFUL AND HELPFUL
THROUGH THESE LONG YEARS
DURING WHICH
"PLEASURE AND PAIN
HAVE FOLLOWED EACH OTHER
LIKE SUNSHINE AND RAIN."

It was through his love for her, he said, that
he was able to keep steadily at work during his
college days, when close application to study
and the confinement of city life were telling not
only upon his health but also wearing away the
inner soul that ever craved, with a deeper and
more poignant longing, the freedom of open
spaces and the breath of the life-giving woods.

It was a very different story from those light-
hearted, familiar ones where "they married and
lived happily ever after." The rain followed
the sunshine very soon after the young doctor
had returned from his wedding-trip and set-
tled down to practice in New York. After

147

HEROES OF TO-DAY

months of struggle against what he thought was
a sort of stubborn malaria, together with the old
rebellion against a shut-in life, the doctor who
had worked so bravely to fit himself to cure
others came face to face with the truth that he
himself had a disease which no doctor could
cure. The world seemed dark indeed when he
thought he must soon leave his loved wife, the
little Charlotte and baby Ned, and all that he
had hoped to accomplish in the future.

He little realized that he had but reached the
second stage in the journey that was to prepare
him in a way he could not understand to be the
1 'Beloved Physician,'* one destined to save
many who, like him, had met death face to face
and trembled before the thought of separation
from those they loved.

A faint light s*eemed to shine in the blackness
of the night that had closed about him when
the resolve came to go away from the city into
the still woods — where he had felt the keenest
joy in "mere living" on brief hunting-trips
to the Adirondacks. His dear wife should be
spared seeing the terrible, hopeless fight, and he
should before the end have a bit of that free

148

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

life for which his tired spirit longed. And so,
though it meant separation, perhaps forever,
from those he loved best, he prepared to go to
Paul Smith's hunting-lodge, which was forty-
two miles from the nearest railroad in the heart
of a still country of mountain lakes and vast,
untroubled forest.

It took three days for the sick man to make
the journey. His friend Lou Livingston, who
accompanied him, tried in vain to persuade him
to give up going to such a rough, remote place.
A mattress and pillows were arranged in the
two-horse stage, in which they had to travel
the forty-two miles of rough mountain road to
the hunting-lodge, and the sick man was made
as comfortable as possible; but when at sun-
set he caught sight of the house through the
pines he was too weak with fever and the jolt-
ing of the long trip to stand or walk. A
hearty, mountain guide picked him up as if he
had been an infant, carried him up to his room,
and, as he laid him on his bed, remarked com-
fortingly :

"That 's nothing, Doctor! You don't weigh
no more than a dried lambskin."

149

HEROES OF TO-DAY

The invalid might well have been depressed
by these words, but the magic of the country
had already begun its work. He ate a hearty
meal with the keenest relish he had known in
weeks and fell asleep like a tired child.

"When I thought I had come to the end, it
proved but the turn in the road," said Dr. Tru-
deau. "I went to the mountains to die — I
found there the beginning of a new life."

As the weeks passed and left him not losing
ground, but actually gaining day by day, the
truth gradually dawned upon him that fresh air
and rest were doing what doctors despaired
of.

After proving what a few months could ac-
complish, and finding that even a short visit
to his home meant an alarming setback, Dr. Tru-
deau and his wife decided that they must go
to the mountain country to live. Can you im-
agine what spending a winter in the Adiron-
dacks meant at that time, when the only houses
were hunting-lodges and the cabins of the
guides'? Once, when making the journey to
their winter quarters, the family was caught in
a blizzard. When the sweat of their struggling

150

ED WARD L. TRUDEAU

horses was turned to a firm casing of ice and
they all had hard work to keep faces and ears
from freezing, they left the cutter, put blankets
on the horses, wrapped the children in buffalo-
robes and buried them in the snow, while the
men tramped ahead and made a track up the hill
for the weary horses. At last, when it was
clear that the animals could go no farther, Paul
Smith set off to the hut of a guide for fresh
horses. As he left the little family buried in
the snow, he said with his hearty laugh which
seemed to put new life in the anxious travelers :

"Doctor, don't you know Napoleon said, 'The
dark regions of Russia is only fit for Russians to
inhabit' f"

Altogether these Napoleons were three days
making the journey through the snow to their
winter haven at Paul Smith's hunting-lodge.

For several years Dr. Trudeau lived with his
family in this wilderness where he had found
health and happiness. His skill as a physician
was given mostly to caring for the lumbermen
and guides for miles about and for their dogs
and horses. Of course there were, too, the peo-
ple of the summer camps. And the story of

151

HEROES OP TO-DAY

his cure led a New York doctor to send a few
patients to try the same life. The number of
these people increased, and gradually the col-
ony of health-seekers began to grow.

One day, when Dr. Trudeau was on the side
of Mount Pisgah, near Saranac Lake, he fell
asleep w'hile leaning on his gun and dreamed
a dream. He saw as in a vision the forest on
the shore of the lake melt away, and the whole
slope covered with houses, built, as it were, in-
side out, so that most of the life of the people
could go on in the open. As he said years later,
when he was making an address at the twenty-
fifth anniversary of the building of the Adiron-
dack Cottage Sanitarium at Saranac Lake, "I
dreamed a dream of a great sanitarium that
should be the everlasting foe of tuberculosis,
and lo, the dream has come true ! ' '

But Dr. Trudeau was a man who knew that,
if good dreams are to come true, one must have
the faith to pray as if there were no such thing
as work, and the steady resolution to work as
if there were no such thing as prayer. Much
faith and much hard work went into the begin-

152

EDWAED L. TRUDEAU

nings of that City of the Sick near Lake Sar-
anac.

There was the time of small things, when the
chosen spot, with its scant grass and huge boul-
ders, looked more like a pasture for goats than
a building-site. Faith, however, can not only
move mountains, it can turn them into building
material ; faith, too, can move the hearts of men
and make many work together as one for a great
cause. The guides whose families the Beloved
Physician had tended without price gave six-
teen acres on the sheltered plateau where he
had seen his dream city arise.

"We shall build not a great hospital where
many are herded together, but cottages where
those who seek refuge here may each have his
zone of pure air and something of the rest
and freedom of home," said Dr. Trudeau. He
talked to his friends, he talked to friends of
his friends — to all who would pause in their
busy lives to listen. His glowing faith kin-
dled enthusiasm in other hearts. Day by day,
not only through the large gifts of the few who
could give much, but also through the small

153

HEROES OF TO-DAY

gifts of the many who could give but little, the
fund grew. The doctor 's dream became a reality.

When we hear the stories of the heroes of old
— the men of might, the grand of soul — does it
seem as if our little day gives no chance for
great deeds ? Look at the Beloved Physician of
Saranac, with his frail body, his cheerful smile,
his unconquerable hope. See him going about
with loving care among those whom life seemed
to have broken and cast aside. See him in his
little laboratory struggling hour after hour,
through weeks and months and years, with no
apparatus save that of his own contriving, with
no training in scientific method, to lure the
germs of the white plague within the field of his
microscope, and force them to give up the secret
of their terrible power. Surely there is no
heroism greater than that of such brave, patient
labor against all odds, against all ills, in spite
of sorrow and loss and the fear of failure.

I like to picture this hero, with his genius for
taking pains, at work over his test-tubes when
his famous patient, Robert Louis Stevenson,
came to visit the laboratory. Dr. Trudeau
held out a little tube of liquid with the words,

154

The first of the sanitarium cottages built in 188."5; known as
"The Little Bed "

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

"Here is our enemy fairly entrapped at last.
This little scum is consumption, the cause of
more human suffering than anything else.'*

The discoverer of "Treasure Island " turned
pale with disgust and backed out of the labora-
tory with these words, "Yes, Doctor, I know
you have a lantern at your belt, but I don't like
the smell of your oil!"

The brilliant imagination of the great writer
failed to understand the steady light of the im-
agination that seeks patiently after scientific
truth in spite of discouragements and years of
fruitless work.

In the last public address which Trudeau
made, in 1910, before a gathering of physicians
and surgeons, he said these words which show
that he had caught the gleam of Stevenson's lan-
tern:

Let us not quench our faith nor turn from the vision
which, whether we own it or not, we carry, as Stevenson's
lantern-bearers, hidden from the outer world; and, thus in-
spired, many will reach the goal ; and if for most of us our
achievements must fall short of our ideals, if, when age
and infirmity overtake us, we come not within sight of the
castle of our dreams, nevertheless, all will be well with us;
for, as Stevenson tells us rightly, "to travel hopefully is
better than to arrive, and the true success is to labor."

157

HEROES OF TO-DAY

One of Trudeau's most cherished possessions
was a fine copy in bronze of Mercie's statue
''Gloria Victis," given him by one of his pa-
tients. The sculptor created this statue in 1871,
after the crushing blow inflicted on France by
the German arms, to console and inspire the
French people with the hope of triumph
through defeat. It shows a young gladiator
who has received his death-wound while facing
the foe, lifted up and borne onward by a splen-
did Victory with outstretched wings. He has
fought the fight and still holds his sword in his
lifeless hand. In losing his life he wins his vic-
tory, that of one of the * 'faithful failures" who
marched toward the new day whose dawn is not
for them but for those who come after.

Dr. Trudeau, ever in the grip of the enemy
that could be held at bay, but never conquered,
labored year after year to save the lives of
others. Many he was able to cure through rest
and the life-giving air of the place he had found
and made to be the battle-ground against tuber-
culosis. In many more he succeeded in arrest-
ing the disease and giving years of useful life,
with restrictions — days and nights in the open,

158

EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

eternal watchfulness. And always, so condi-
tioned himself, he worked, while often laboring
for every breath he drew, to find the real cure —
a something that would be able to destroy the
terrible germs. He never lived to find it, but
he prepared the way for others, who will go on
with his work and carry it to success.

Shortly before his death, in November, 1915,
Dr. Trudeau tried to explain what the statue
"Gloria Victis" had meant to him:

"It typifies," he said, "many victories I have
seen won in Saranac Lake by those whom I had
learned to love ; the victory of the spirit over the
body ; the victories that demand acquiescence in
worldly failure, and in the supreme sacrifice of
life itself as a part of their achievement; the
victory of the Nazarene, which ever speaks its
great message to the ages."

159

1 'THE PROPHET-ENGINEER":
GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

A man went down to Panama,

Where many a man had died,
To slit the sliding mountains

And lift the eternal tide:
A man stood up in Panama,

And the mountains stood aside.

PERCY MAC KATE.

"THE PBOPHET-ENGINEER"

WHEN a boy has a name like George
Washington Goethals he must have
something out of the ordinary about him to let
it pass with his companions on the playground.
Should he prove a weakling, should the other
boys discover any flaw in the armor of his self-
confidence, such a name would be a mockery
and a misfortune.

Is there any one who cannot recall certain
rarely uncomfortable moments of his childhood
when he wished that the fates had provided him
with a Christian name that the other chaps
could n't send back and forth like a shuttlecock,
with a new derisive turn at each toss? One
expects to endure a certain amount of * ' Georgie
Porgie" nonsense, which has the excuse of
rime if not of reason, but when one also has
a last name that nobody ever heard of before,
he finds himself wishing sometimes that he had
been born a Johnson or a Smith.

163

HEROES OF TO-DAY

"I don't believe that I quite like our name,"
remarked little George Goethals in the confi-
dence of the family circle one evening. "It is
a bit queer, isn't it?"

"It 's a name to be proud of, son," was the
reply. "It 's a name to live up to. For more
than a thousand years it has been borne by
strong, brave men. It belongs to the history
of more than one country and century, and the
way it was won makes a pretty story. ' '

"Tell me the story!" begged the boy, breath-
lessly, his eyes dark with interest.

"In the days when knights were bold, a man
named Honorius, whose courage was as finely
tempered as his sword, went with the Duke of
Burgundy from Italy into France. In a fierce
battle with the Saracens he received a terrible
blow on the neck which would have felled most
men to the ground, but his strength and steel
withstood the shock and won for him a nick-
name of honor — Boni Coli (good neck). Later,
when he was rewarded for his valor by a grant
of land in the north country which is now Hol-
land and Belgium, this name was changed after
the Dutch fashion into Goet Hals (good or stiff

164

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

neck), and became the family name of all that
man's descendants, who made it an honored
name in Holland. When your ancestors came
to America they hoped that it would become
an honored name in the new country, and it
must be your part to help bring that to pass. ' '

The boy's eyes grew thoughtful. "For more
than a thousand years it has been the name of
brave men," he repeated to himself. "But it is
an American name now, isn't it?" he added
anxiously.

"Yes, son, it is just as American as it can be
made," his father returned with a laugh. "We
call it Go'thals, — there is nothing more truly
American than a thing that has go, you know, —
and we 've given you the name of the first Amer-
ican to go with it. ' '

"I '11 show that an American Goethals can
be as brave as any Dutch one," George boasted.

"Strong hearts and brave deeds speak for
themselves, son," he was reminded, "and they
are understood everywhere, whether the people
speak Dutch, English, or Chinese."

As the boy's school-days went by, it seemed
that he had made that truth his own. In his

165

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

studies he showed that common sense and thor-
oughness are better than mere dash and bril-
liancy. On the playground he let others do the
talking, content to make his reply when he had
his turn at the bat — or not at all. And the
knightly baron of old who won the name of
Good Neck could not have held up his head and
faced his world with a stronger and more 1 3so-
lute bearing than did this American school-boy.

To those who knew him it was no surprise
when he entered West Point; and it was no
surprise to any one when he graduated second
in his class.

"Of course, he wouldn't be first," one of his
classmates said; "that would have been too
showy for G. W. I don't know any one to
whom just the honor of a thing means less.
He 's glad to have done a good job, and of
course he 's glad to be one of the picked few to
go into the engineer corps.'7

As if unwilling to part with the young lieu-
tenant, West Point kept him as an instructor
for several months before sending him on to
Willett's Point, where he remained in the En-
gineering School of Application for two years.

166

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

He soon proved that he had the virtues of the
soldier and the leader of men — loyalty and per-
severance; loyalty, that makes a man able to
take and give orders without becoming a ma-
chine or a tyrant ; and perseverance, that makes
him face each problem with the resolution to
fight it out to the finish.

There were years when he was detailed to
one task after another. Now it was the de-
velopment of irrigation works for vast tracts
of land in the West where only water was
needed to make the section a garden spot of the
continent. Then, when his system of ditches
was fairly planned out, he was ordered off to
cope with another problem, the building of
dikes and dams along the Ohio River to curb
the spring floods and to make the stream a de-
pendable servant to man. Always he was "on
the battle-front of engineering," facing nature
in her most obstinate moods and conquering
obstacles that stood in the way of achievement.

Sometimes when he was sent to a new point
on the firing-line, leaving others to carry his
work to completion, he would say to himself a
bit ruefully, "What would it be like, I wonder,

167

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to stay by a job till the day of results!" But
always Ms experience was the same. This
year, orders took him to canal work along the
Tennessee River; the next, perhaps, found him
detailed to the work of coast fortifications at
Newport. He was sent for a time to the Acad-
emy at West Point as instructor ir1 civil and
military engineering, and for a while he was
stationed at Washington as assistant to the
chief engineer of the army. Everywhere he
showed a love of work for the work's sake, a
passion for a job well done. But what was
rarer still, he showed a reach of understanding
that was as broad as his practical grasp was
firm. He always saw the relation between his
own job and a greater whole.

"While he keeps his eye on the matter in
hand, it does n't shut out a glimpse of the things
of yesterday and to-morrow. That 's why he 's
so reasonable and why his men will follow
wherever he leads, ' ' it was said.

When the Spanish- American war broke out
he went to Porto Rico as chief engineer of the
First Army Corps. There his initial task was
to construct a wharf where supplies could be

168

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

landed, while a war vessel, which had been de-
tailed for the purpose, stood guard over the
operations. When the chief engineer looked at
the heavy surf breaking on the beach his eye
fell upon some flat-bottomed barges which had
been captured by the warship, and a plan for
quick and effective construction recommended
itself on the instant.

' ' Fill the barges with sand, and sink them as
a foundation for the wharf, ' ' was his order.

Only one, however, had been so appropriated
when the amazed admiral in command of the
man-of-war sent his aide to direct the engineer
to call a halt in his extraordinary proceedings.

"I am acting upon orders from my com-
manding officer and can take none from any one
else," replied Major Goethals, while the work
with the second barge went on merrily. In a
trice the aide returned with the warning that
unless the orders were obeyed, the man-of-war
would open fire on the rash offender.

"You '11 have to fire away, then," was the
reply, "for we shall not stop until we have
completed the work we were sent here to do and
landed the stores."

169

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

The admiral did not send a shot after his
threat, but he did forward a complaint to the
engineer's commanding officer, who directed
that lumber be employed instead of the barges.

Major Goethals sent back the reply that there
was no lumber to be had, and, while the offended
admiral darkly threatened a court-martial, com-
pleted the wharf.

"It was. pretty uncomfortable during the
time the admiral passed by without speak-
ing, was it not!" a brother officer asked the
major.

"Well — we landed the supplies," returned
the engineer, quietly, as if that was the only
thing that mattered after all. As usual, he was
content to let results speak for themselves.

All of the work that this master engineer
had done up to this time, however, was really
unconscious preparation for a mighty task that
lay waiting for a man great enough to face with
courage and commanding mind and will the dif-
ficulties and problems involved in the biggest
engineering job in America, or, indeed, in the
whole world — the digging of the Panama Canal.
Ever since Columbus made his four voyages in

170

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

the vain hope of finding a waterway between
the West and the East, ever since Balboa,
' ' silent upon a peak in Darien, ' ' gazed out over
the limitless expanse of the Pacific, it had
seemed as if man must be able to make for him-
self a path for his ships across the narrow bar-
rier of land that nature had left there as a
challenge to his powers. At first it seemed that
it must be as simple as it was necessary to cut
a canal through forty miles of earth, but time
showed that the mighty labors of Hercules were
but child's play compared to this.

Before Sir Francis Drake, the daring pirate
whom destiny and patriotism made into an ex-
plorer and an admiral, died in his ship off the
Isthmus in 1596, a survey had been made of
the trail along which the Spanish adventurers
had been carrying the plunder of their con-
quests in South America across the narrow
neck of land from the town of Panama to Porto
Bello, where it could be loaded on great gal-
leons and taken to Spain. For three centuries
men of different nations — Spain, France, Col-
ombia, and the United States — made surveys
and considered various routes for a canal, but

171

HEROES OF TO-DAY

when they came face to face with the project at
close range, the tropical jungle and the great
rocky hills put a check on their ventures before
they were begun.

In 1875, however, when the Suez Canal was
triumphantly completed by the French canal
company it seemed as if Count de Lesseps, the
hero of this enterprise, might well be the man
to pierce the New World isthmus. Blinded by
his brilliant success, the venerable engineer (de
Lesseps was at this time seventy-five years old)
undertook the leadership of a vast enterprise
to dig a similar canal across Panama. A canal
was a canal; an isthmus was an isthmus. Of
course, the man who had made a way for ships
through Suez could join the waters of the At-
lantic and Pacific at Panama. No one seemed
to realize that the digging of a ditch through
one hundred miles of level, sandy desert was an
entirely different problem from cutting a water-
way through solid rock and removing moun-
tains, to say nothing of diverting into a new
channel the flow of a turbulent river and recon-
ciling the widely different tides of two oceans.

Other engineers realized that the difficulties
172

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

in the way of a sea-level ditch were stupendous
and that the lock canal was the type for Pan-
ama. Trusting, however, in the careless plans
of Lieutenant Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte
Wyse of the French Navy, who did not cover
in his hasty survey more than two thirds of the
territory through which the canal was to pass,
Count de Lesseps estimated -that the work
could be completed for $120,000,000, and prom-
ised that in six years the long-sought waterway
to the Pacific and the East would be open.
None could doubt that the tolls paid by ships
which would no longer be compelled to round
Cape Horn in order to reach the western coast
of the continents of North and South America,
the islands of the Pacific, and the rich trading
centers of the Orient, would repay tenfold the
people who supplied the money for the great
enterprise.

Trusting in the magic name of the engineer
who had brought glory to France and wealth
to those who had supported his Suez venture,
thousands of thrifty people throughout France
offered their savings in exchange for stock in
the canal company. But the only persons who

173

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ever made any money out of the enterprise
were the dishonest men in high positions who
took advantage alike of the unsuspecting op-
timism of de Lesseps and the faith of the pub-
lic in his fame. They drew large salaries and
lived like princes, while, for want of proper
management the money expended for lahor and
machinery on the isthmus was for the most part
thrown away. Many of the tools imported
were suited to shoveling sand, not to removing
rock. The matter of transportation for men
and supplies seemed not to have been consid-
ered at all. And the engineers and workmen
fell prey in large numbers to yellow fever and
malaria, for at that time it was not known that
the mosquito was responsible for the spread of
these diseases. Even the splendid hospitals
built by the French provided favorable breed-
ing-places for the carriers of the fever germs.
The success of any large enterprise depends
above everything else on the skilful handling of
the problems of human engineering. For the
quality of any work depends on the character
of the workers. This means that a master of
any great undertaking that involves the labor of

174

GEOEGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

many must first of all be a master of men. The
successful engineer of the Panama Canal had
not only to secure the loyalty and cooperation
of all the workers of many races and prejudices,
but also to provide comfortable houses, whole-
some food, and healthful living conditions, alike
for body and mind, of his army of workers.
The French did not know the country in which
they worked — the difficulties and dangers it
presented. They did not know the men who
worked for them — their needs and how to meet
them. They did not know the men they worked
with — their inefficiency and graft and how to
forestall them. The de Lesseps enterprise
was, therefore, doomed to failure. After ex-
pending $260,000,000 (more than twice as much
as the entire cost of Suez) in nine years, less
than a quarter of the canal was dug and the
chief problems, presented by the unruly Chag-
res Eiver and the floods of the rainy season,
were still untouched.

This is not the place to describe the disorderly
retreat of the French forces, who hastily aban-
doned work and workers, tools and machines,
like so much wreckage of a hopeless disaster.

175

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

Some of the rascals and swindlers were pun-
ished ; many others escaped. The aged de Les-
seps — acclaimed as a hero yesterday, de-
nounced as a traitor to-day — died of a broken
heart. Thousands of poor people lost their
little savings and with them their hope of com-
fort in their old age. When the United States
offered to pay forty million dollars for all that
the French company had accomplished, and all
that it possessed in the way of equipment, plans,
and privileges, the stockholders were only too
glad to close the bargain.

The whole story of how the United States
went about this world job makes one of the most
interesting chapters of our history. It is, how-
ever, " another story." We cannot here go
into the matter of how Panama became a
republic independent of Colombia, and how
the United States purchased for ten million dol-
lars a strip of land ten miles wide, five miles
on either side of the canal, across the isthmus.
This Canal Zone is "as much the territory of
the United States as the parade-ground at West
Point," the ports of Balboa and Cristobal are

176

Major Goethals, as Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission,
Washington, D. C., 1908

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

American, and the United States holds the
right to enforce sanitary regulations in the
cities of Panama and Colon at either end of the
canal and to preserve order when the Panama
authorities prove unequal to the task.

The shout went up from all over America:
"Make the dirt fly! Show what the spirit of
'get there' and Yankee grit can do!" Of
course, the temptation to produce immediate re-
sults was great. But the clear-seeing men in
control said: "There must be no headlong
rush this time. We will be content to make
haste slowly and take steps to prevent the evils
that have defeated those who have gone before.
We must clean the cities, drain the swamps,
make clearings in the rank growth of the jun-
gles. We must make a place even in the trop-
ics where health and happy human living are
possible."

But the ' * clean-up ' ' slogan was not able alone
to conquer the specter of disease. Yellow fever
still haunted the sanitary streets and byways.
Only through the heroism of brave men who
loved their neighbors better than themselves

179

HEROES OF TO-DAY

and who were willing to die that others might
live was the secret learned. The experiments
to which they gladly offered up their lives
proved that the bite of a particular kind of mos-
quito was responsible for the spread of the dis-
ease, and that, if this insect could be destroyed,
yellow fever would be destroyed with it. Colo-
nel Gorgas, the chief sanitary officer, whose
watchword was "First prevent, then curb, and,
when all else fails, cure, ' ' was the leader in the
fight for healthful conditions on the isthmus.

But all this time we have been talking much
about the battle-ground and little about the
general who led the forces to victory.

It was clear that the time was ripe. The
moment cried out for a man of power — one
whose might as an engineer could command the
forces of earth and ocean, and whose under-
standing of the even more difficult problems of
human engineering would make him a true
leader of men.

In 1905 Mr. Taft, who was at that time secre-
tary of war, journeyed to Panama to see how
the work was going forward and to plan for
the fortifications of the canal. He took with

180

him an officer of engineers, a tall, vigorous man
of forty seven, with gray hair, a strong, youth-
ful, bronzed face, and clear, direct, blue eyes.
No trumpet sounded before Major Goethals to
announce the man of the hour — the one whom
destiny and experience had equipped for the
great work. He studied every phase of the
giant enterprise, and, when he returned to
Washington, prepared a report that showed
not only a thorough understanding of every de-
tail, but also a broad comprehension of the
problems of the whole. His recommendation
of a lock canal was submitted by the secretary
of war to the President, and with it went Mr.
Taft's recommendation of Major Goethals for
the position of chief engineer. Experience had
proved that divided authority and changes in
policy through changes in management were
serious drawbacks.

"If I can find an army officer equal to the
job, he will have to fight the thing out to the
finish," said President Roosevelt. "He must
manage the work on the spot, not from an office
in Washington. He must be given full power
to act and to control ; and he must be a man big

181

HEROES OF TO-DAY

enough to realize that large authority means
only large responsibility."

After carefully considering Major Goethals'
record and reports and then talking with the
man himself, the President became convinced
that he had found the right chief for the work
and the army of workers. But when it was
generally known that an army officer was to
command at Panama, people shook their heads.
' ' The high-handed methods of the military will
never succeed there," they said. " Shoulder-
straps cannot do the work!"

On the occasion of Major Goethals' first ap-
pearance before his staff of engineers and
other assistants it was very clear that they
looked upon the departure of their late chief,
Mr. Stevens, with regret that became keener as
they anticipated the formality and rigors of
military control. When it was the new lead-
er's turn to speak they faced him silently.
Major Goethals stood tall and firm like a true
descendant of the "Good Neck" of old, but he
looked them in the eyes frankly and pleasantly.

"There will be no militarism and no salutes in
Panama, ' ' he said. * ' I have left my uniform in

182

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

moth-balls at home, and with it I have left be-
hind military duties and fashions. We are here
to fight nature shoulder to shoulder. Your
cause is my cause. We have common enemies
— Culebra Cut and the climate ; and the comple-
tion of the canal will be our victory. I intend
to be the commanding officer, but the chiefs of
division will be the colonels, the foremen the
captains, and no man who does his duty has
aught to fear from militarism."

Let us see how they went against the first
enemy, Culebra Cut ; the channel that was to be
made through the formidable "peak in Darien"
known as Culebra Mountain. It is only seven
o'clock, but the chief engineer — Colonel Goe-
thals, now — is at the station ready to take the
early train.

"Suppose we walk through the tunnel,'* he
remarks. * ' You know the dirt-trains have right
of way in Panama. We should hesitate to de-
lay one even for the President of the [United
States or the Czar of all the Russias."

At the end of the tunnel a car that looks like
a limousine turned switch-engine is waiting on
a siding for the "boss of the job." Painted

183

HEROES OF TO-DAY

light yellow, like the passenger-cars of the Pan-
ama Railroad, it is known among the men as the
"Yellow Peril," or the " Brain-wagon." But
if any one expects, as a matter of course, to see
the colonel in the "Yellow Peril," he is as likely
as not doomed to disappointment. The chief
engineer drops off, now to see men drilling holes
for dynamite, now to watch the loading of the
dirt-trains from the great steam-shovels.

As we see the solid rock and rocklike earth of
Culebra we realize that without dynamite the
canal would be impossible. Let us watch for a
moment the tearing down of the "everlasting
hill. " Deafening machine-drills pierce the rock
or hard soil with holes from three to thirty or
forty feet in depth. These holes, which have
been carefully arranged so as to insure the
greatest effect in an earth-quaking, rock-break-
ing way, are filled with dynamite and then con-
nected with an electric wire so that the pressure
of a button will set off the entire charge. A
rumble and then a roar — the earth trembles —
heaves — then great masses of rock, mud, and
water are hurled high in the air. A fraction of
Culebra larger than a six- or seven-story build-

184

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

ing is frequently torn down by one of these ex-
plosions and the rock broken into pieces that can
be seized by the steam-shovels and loaded on
the dump-cars.

It is interesting to see how, through an in-
genious arrangement of the network of tracks,
the loaded cars always go on the down grade
and only empty trains have to crawl up an in-
cline. Much of the rock taken from the cut is
used to build the great Gatun Dam, that keeps
the troublesome Chagres Kiver from flooding
the canal. The rest goes to the construction of
breakwaters at the ends of the waterway or to
the filling of swamps and valleys.

The "brain-wagon" is going along without
the head. He is climbing blithely over the
roughest sort of ground, now dodging onrush-
ing dirt-trains, now running to shelter with the
"powder-men" at the moment of blasting. A
question here, a word there, and on he goes. It
seems as if even the steam-shovels know that
there is a masterhand at the helm and vie with
one another to see which can take up the most
earth at a bite. You would think any man
would be completely played out after such con-

185

HEROES OF TO-DAY

stant jumping and climbing under the hot rays
of a tropical sun, as the hours draw near to
noon, but the colonel pulls up the long flight of
steps that lead from the cut and remarks
briskly, "Nothing like a little exercise every
morning to keep your health in this climate ! ' '

" There never was such a man for being on
the job!" exclaimed one of his foremen, admir-
ingly. "The only time the colonel isn't work-
ing is from ten p. M. to five A. M., when he is
asleep."

No despotic monarch in his inherited king-
dom ever had more absolute power than had the
Man of Panama. The men from the chiefs of
divisions down to the last Jamaican negro on
the line realized that he was master of the busi-
ness and that his orders sprang from a thor-
ough understanding of conditions and a large
grasp of the whole. He was a successful engi-
neer, however, not only because he knew the
forces of nature that they were working to con-
quer in Panama, but also the human nature he
was working with. He knew that no chain is
stronger than its weakest link, and that no mat-
ter how perfect his plans and how powerful his

186

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

huge machines and engines, the success he
strove for would depend first of all on the
character and the cooperation of the work-
ers.

"The real engineer must above all feel the
vital importance of the human side of engineer-
ing work, ' ' he declared. * * The man who would
move mountains and make the flow of rivers
serve human ends must first be a master of hu-
man construction."

He knew that if there were to be able and will-
ing workers in Panama, they must be provided
with the means of comfortable and contented
living. It was not enough to defeat death in
the form of plague and fever ; it was necessary
to make life worth while. For man could not
live by work alone in a land of swamps and
jungles. Houses with screened porches, with
gardens, and all the comforts and conveniences
to be found at home were provided for the five
thousand American engineers, clerks, and fore-
men. Ships with cold-storage equipment
brought food supplies from New York or New
Orleans, and every morning a long train of re-
frigerator-cars steamed across the isthmus car-

187

HEROES OF TO-DAY

rying fresh provisions to all the hotels, town
commissaries, and camps.

"You needn't pity us because we live in the
Zone," said Mrs. Smith. "We get just as good
meat and green vegetables as you can in market
and at wholesale prices. Our house is rent free,
with furniture, linen, and silverware provided.
We have electric lights and a telephone. We
even have ice-cream soda and the movies ! ' '

The Man of Panama knew that all work and
no play would not only make Jack a dull boy,
but also a poor workman. Recreation build-
ings were provided where one could enjoy bas-
ket-ball, squash, bowling, or read the latest
books and magazines. There were clubs for
men and for women, ban.d concerts, and a base-
ball league.

"The colonel not only gave time and thought
to the things that kept us contented and fit,"
one of the engineers said, "but he always had
time for everybody who felt he wanted a word
with him. The man who was handling the big-
gest job in the world nevertheless seemed to
think it was worth while to consider the little

188

troubles of each man who came along. Have
you heard the song they sing in Panama!

"Don't hesitate to state your case, the boss will hear you

through ;

It 's true he 's sometimes busy, and has other things to do,
But come on Sunday morning, and line up with the rest,—
You '11 maybe feel some better with that grievance off your
chest.

See Colonel Goethals, tell Colonel Goethals,
It 's the only right and proper thing to do.
Just write a letter, or, even better,
Arrange a little Sunday interview."

The colonel's Sunday mornings were remark-
able occasions. You might see foregathered
there the most interesting variety of human
types that could be found together anywhere in
the world — English, Spanish, French, Italians,
turbaned coolies from India, and American ne-
groes. One man thinks that his foreman does
not appreciate his good points; another comes
to present a claim for an injury received on a
steam-shovel. Mrs. A. declares with some feel-
ing that she is never given as good cuts of meat
as Mrs. B. enjoys every day. Another house-
wife does n't see why, if Mrs. F. can get bread
from the hospital bakery, she can't as well; be-

189

HEROES OF TO-DAY

cause she, too, can appreciate a superior arti-
cle!

1 1 Of course, many of the things are trivial and
even absurd," said the colonel; "but if some-
body thinks his little affair important, of course
it is — to him. And that is the point, isn't it!
He feels better when he has had it out ; and if
it makes the people any happier in their exile to
have this court of appeal, that is not a thing to
be despised. Besides, first and last. I come to
understand many things that are really impor-
tant from any point of view."

"He is the squarest boss I ever worked for,"
declared one of the locomotive engineers, "and
I '11 tell you the grafters don't have any show
with him. He had a whole cargo of meat sent
back the other day because it was n't above sus-
picion. I happen to know, too, that he turned
back a load of screening on a prominent busi-
ness house who thought that they could save a
bit on the copper — that for a government order
it would never be noticed if it was not quite
rust-proof."

The canal was finished not only in less time
than had ever been thought possible, but also

190

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

with such honest and efficient administration of
every detail that nowadays, when the statement
is sometimes made that no great public enter-
prise can be carried through without more or
less mismanagement and jobbing, the champion
of Uncle Sam's business methods retorts,
"Look at Panama!"

The colonel's quiet mastery in moments of
stress was perhaps the most interesting phase
of his human engineering. The representa-
tives of a labor union threaten a strike unless
he orders the release of one of their number who
has been convicted of manslaughter. "When
will we get our answer?" asked the spokes-
man.

' ' You have it now, ' ' replied Colonel Goethals.
"You said that if the man was not out of the
penitentiary by seven this evening you would all
quit. By calling up the penitentiary you will
learn that he is still there. That is your an-
swer. It is now ten minutes past seven."

"But, Colonel, you don't want to tie up the
whole work?" protested the leader.

"I am not proposing to tie up the work — you
are doing that," was the reply.

191

HEROES OF TO-DAY

"But, Colonel, why can't you pardon the
man?"

"I will take no action in response to a mob.
As for your threat to leave the service, I wish
to say that every man of you who is not at his
post to-morrow morning will be given his trans-
portation to the United States, and there will
be no string to it. He will go out on the first
steamer and he will never come back. ' '

There was only one man who failed to report
the following day, and he sent a doctor's certifi-
cate stating that he was too ill to be out of bed.

Human engineering was especially called into
play when the Man of Panama faced commit-
tees of inquiry and investigation from Congress.
A pompous politician once demanded in a chal-
lenging tone and with a sharp eye on the colonel,
"How much cracked stone do you allow for a
cubic yard of concrete?"

"One cubic yard," was the reply.

"You evidently do not understand my ques-
tion," rejoined the investigator in the manner
of one who is bent on convicting another through
his own words. "How much cracked stone do
you allow for a cubic yard of concrete?"

192

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

"One cubic yard. "

"But you don't allow for the sand and con-
crete." The implied accusation was spoken
with grave emphasis.

"Those go into the spaces among the cracked
stone," was the unruffled reply. The smile that
went around the room was felt rather than
heard, but the pompous politician had no fur-
ther questions.

This master of men, who was never known
to yield his ground when he had once taken a
stand, was always a man of few words. He
preferred to let acts and facts do the talking.

"You know, Colonel Goethals," said a prom-
inent statesman on one occasion, "a great many
people think we are never going to carry this
job through to the finish. What would you say
when diplomats of the leading powers come at
you with questions and declare it will never be
done?"

"I wouldn't say anything," was the reply.

On another occasion the boss of the job said:
"Some day in September, 1913, I expect to go
to Colon and take the Panama Eailroad steamer
and put her through the canal. If we get all

193

HEROES OF TO-DAY

the way across, I '11 give it out to the news-
papers— if we don't, I '11 keep quiet about it."

It was said of old that if one had faith enough
he could move mountains. We cannot doubt
that the Man of Panama carried through his
great work because he had faith — not a passive
faith that hoped and waited, but an active faith-
fulness that worked in full confidence that des-
tiny worked with him. And this faith and loy-
alty was a living power that enkindled like faith-
fulness in those who worked with him.

The Man of Panama is General Goethals now,
but when any admirer would imply that his gen-
eralship— his administration and human en-
gineering— was the chief factor in the success
of the great work, he invariably replies that he
was but one man of many working shoulder to
shoulder in a common cause. The simple
greatness of the " prophet-engineer" and leader
of men was shown in the words with which he
accepted the medal of the National Geographic
Society :

"The canal has been the work of many, and
it has been the pride of Americans who have vis-
ited the isthmus to find the spirit which has ani-

194

S'/ku/u l,u III-, an

The ' ' Man of Panama ' ' at Panama

GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

mated the forces. Every man was doing the
particular part of the work that was necessary
to make it a success. No chief of any enterprise
ever commanded an army that was so loyal, so
faithful, that gave its strength and its blood to
the successful completion of its task as did the
canal forces. And so in accepting the medal
and thanking those who confer it, I accept it and
thank them in the name of every member of the
canal army."

Since the completion of the canal, its master-
builder has been called to serve his country in
more than one great crisis. At the time of the
threatened railroad strike in the fall of 1916,
he was made chairman of the commission of
three appointed by President Wilson to investi-
gate the working of the eight-hour law for train
operators, which was the subject of dispute be-
tween the managers of the roads and the men
who ran the freight-trains. In March, 1917,
he was selected by Governor Edge of New Jer-
sey to serve as advisory engineer on the con-
struction of the new fif teen-million-dollar high-
way system of that State.

197

A SHEPHERD OF

"THE GREAT COUNTRY":

BISHOP ROWE

"Love is a bodily shape; and Christian works are no
more than animate faith and love, as flowers are the ani-
mate springtide."

LONGFELLOW.

A SHEPHERD OF
"THE GREAT COUNTRY"

HAVE you heard the story of Offero, the
mighty giant of Canaan, who made a vow
never to serve any master but the most power-
ful of all the rulers of earth ?

"As my strength is great, so shall my service
be great, " he said, "and my king must be one
who stands in fear of no man. ' '

He wandered over all lands, looking in vain
for the greatest monarch, for each king plainly
stood in dread of some other power. At length,
however, he was told by a holy hermit that the
King of kings was an invisible Lord who
reigned through love in the hearts of men.

"How can I serve him?" asked Offero.

"You must fast and pray," answered the her-
mit.

"Nay," cried Offero, "not so! For I should
then lose my strength which is all that I have
to bring to his service."

For a moment the holy hermit prayed silently
201

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to be given wisdom. Then his face shone as if
from a light within.

' * There is a river over which many poor peo-
ple must cross," he said, "and there is no
bridge. The current is often so swift and
treacherous at the ford that even the strongest
are swept from their feet and lost. With your
great strength you could help one and all to
safety. It would be a work of love — meet serv-
ice for the Lord of Love."

And so Offero, the giant, built him a little hut
by the side of the stream and dwelt there all his
days, lending his strength to all who needed it
in the name of the unseen King whom he served.
It is said that one night in a wild storm a little
child came praying to be carried across. Now,
for the first time, Offero knew what weakness
and faltering meant. He staggered and all but
fell in the foaming current.

"Oh, little child," he cried out as he stumbled,
panting and spent, to the farther bank, "never
before have I borne such a weight ! I felt as if
I were carrying the whole world on my shoul-
ders!"

"And well you might, strong one," said the
202

SHEPHEKD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

child, ' ' for you have this- night carried the Mas-
ter whom you serve. Henceforth your name
shall be not Offero but Christopher, which
means one who has carried Christ."

And the good giant was called Saint Christo-
pher from that day. You have perhaps seen
pictures of him, for more than one great artist
has tried to paint the story of his faithful serv-
ice of love.

We are going to hear to-day the story of a
strong man of our own time, who, like -Offero
of old, vowed to serve with his strength the
greatest Master of all — the King of kings. The
tale of his life began November 20, 1856, when
Peter Trimble Rowe was born in Toronto, Can-
ada. He was a tall, sturdy lad, who early
learned to laugh at cold weather and strenuous
days in the open. The more wintry it was
without, the more glowing the warmth within
his hardy, alert body. If you had met him as
he returned from a holiday afternoon spent on
snow-shoes, your pulses would have throbbed
in sympathy with his happy, tingling vigor.
You would have felt as if you had "warmed
both hands before the fire of life."

203

HEROES OF TO-DAY

He had bright Irish eyes, a ready Irish laugh,
and the merry heart that belongs with them.
His heart was, moreover, as warm as it was
glad. He laughed with people, not at them;
and he had a quick understanding of their trou-
bles and difficulties as well as of the fun that
lay near the surface of things. This means
that his heart caught the beat of other hearts,
and that he early learned the lessons that love
alone can teach.

It was while he was still a student that he
decided what his life work must be. ' * Man can-
not live by bread alone" — these words had a
very vital meaning for him. There were many
in the world, he knew, who spent all their days
struggling for bread, as if that alone could sat-
isfy their longing for life. Very simply he said
to himself: "I must use my strength to .help
where help is most needed. I must go to the
far-off, frontier places where people live and
die without light and without hope."

As soon as he had graduated from Trinity
College, Toronto, and was ordained a minister
of the church, he went as missionary to an In-
dian tribe on the northern shore of Lake Huron.

204

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

In caring for this wild, neglected flock the
young shepherd needed all his splendid, vigor-
ous health and hardihood. He went around in
summer drought and winter storm, often sleep-
ing by a camp-fire or in an Indian wigwam, in
order that he might bring the light of a new
hope into the dark lives of these first Ameri-
cans.

"The Indians have learned little good from
the white men or from civilization," he said
ruefully. "They have acquired some of our
weaknesses and diseases — that is about all."

He longed to bring to them in exchange for
the old free life in their vast forests and broad
prairie country, a new freedom of the spirit
that should enable them to understand and use
the good things in the white man's world. Do
you think that he tried to do this through
preaching? He really did not preach at all.
He lived with the people and talked to them as
a friend who was ready to share what he had
with others on the same trail.

Do you remember Emerson's much-quoted
challenge? — "My dear sir, what you are speaks
so loud that I cannot hear what you are

205

HEROES OF TO-DAY

saying. " What a person is will always be
heard above what he says. In the case of
Mr. Rowe, the strong, self-reliant, sympathetic,
kindly spirit of the man ever talked with a di-
rect appeal to his people. He tramped and
hunted, canoed and fished with them, and shared
with them the fortunes of the day around the
evening camp-fire. No one had a cheerier word
or a heartier laugh. They were ready to hear
all that he had to tell them of the things that
make life happier and better, and of the Master
he served, who loved his red children no less
than the white.

When the work was well under way on the
Indian reservation, the young man accepted the
call to a new field at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
Here he had again the challenge- and inspira-
tion of pioneer work. There were six members
of his church when he took charge; when, ten
years later, he left his flock to another pastor
it numbered two hundred and fifty. He had,
moreover, pushed out into the surrounding
country and established missions at several dif-
ferent points. He was sure that his strength
and endurance, his power to conquer cold, fa-

206

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

tigue, and other unfriendly conditions, should
be used in the greatest cause of all — in going
"to seek and save those that are lost" in the
wild places of the earth.

"I love battling with wind and weather and
pulling against the stream," he used to say.
"I was born tough, and it 's only common sense
to put such natural toughness to some real
use."

So it was that, like Saint Christopher, he
was resolved to serve his King with his
strength.

In 1895, when a bishop was wanted to take
charge of the great unexplored field of all
Alaska — scattered white men who had gone
there for fish, furs, or gold ; Indian tribes in the
vast, trackless interior; and Eskimos in the
far North within the Arctic Circle — people said
without hesitation, "Mr. Rowe is the man to go
as shepherd to that country."

A bishop, you know, is an "overseer," one
who is responsible for the welfare of the people
of a certain district or diocese, as it is called.
He is a sort of first shepherd, who has general
charge of all the flocks (churches and missions),

207

HEROES OF TO-DAY

and who tries to provide for those that are with-
out care. The man to undertake this work in
Alaska would have to be one of the hardy, pa-
tient explorer-missionaries, like Father Mar-
quette, who in 1673 traveled in a birch canoe
through the Great Lakes and along the Missis-
sippi, ministering to the Indians and making a
trail through the New World wilderness.

Alaska is an Indian word which means "the
Great Country." It is, indeed, not one but
many lands. Most people think of it as a wild,
snow-covered waste, whose arctic climate has
been braved by white men only for the sake of
its salmon, seals, and later for the gold that
was found hidden away in its frost-locked soil.
The country along the Pacific coast is warmed
by the Japan current just as the British Isles
are by the Gulf Stream, and its climate is milder
in winter and cooler in summer than that of
New England. It is a land of wonderful, in-
spiring beauty, with lordly, snow-crowned
mountain peaks; forests of enchanting green-
ness bordering clear, deep fiords; and fields
bright with poppies, bluebells, wild roses, and
other flowers of the most vivid coloring. The

208

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

interior, through which flows the Yukon, that
great highway of Alaska, is much colder, but it
is only the northern portion reaching into the
Polar Sea that has the frigid conditions that
many people associate with "the Great Coun-
try."

When in early April, Bishop Rowe took the
steamer from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, he
found that two hundred of his fellow passen-
gers were bound for the newly discovered gold
fields. Many of them were fine, rugged fellows
who loved strenuous endeavor better than easy,
uneventful days. Some few of them were ' ' roll-
ing stones" of the sort that would make trou-
ble anywhere.

"When I looked forward to what might be
done for the lonely settlers and forlorn natives
in Alaska," said Bishop Rowe, "I did not at
first realize that an important part of the work
would be with the great army of gold-seekers
who suddenly find themselves in the midst of
hardships, disappointments, and temptations
that they have never known before."

Of course the men on board were anxious to
learn everything they could about the "Great

209

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Country." Each person who had been to
Alaska before was surrounded by a group of
eager questioners.

"It is the richest country on God's earth,"
declared a merchant. "There are no such
hauls of salmon and halibut anywhere else.
"Why, the fisheries alone are worth more in one
year than the paltry sum of $7,200,000 that we
paid Russia for Alaska. And think how the
people in America made fun of Seward for urg-
ing the purchase. Said it was fit for nothing
but a polar bear picnic grounds."

"Was n't it hinted that the United States was
paying Russia in that way for her friendship
during the Civil War — by offering to take a
frozen white elephant off her hands and giving
her a few million dollars into the bargain?"
asked another.

"Yes," rejoined a man who was evidently a
hunter, "and we 're just beginning to wake up
to the bargain we have. I 've been there before
for the sport — bear, moose, caribou. You
never knew such a happy hunting ground for
the chap who goes in for big game. But now
I 'm for the gold fields. And, believe me, I 've

210

the start of you other fellows in knowing what
I 'm up against. There are no Pullman sleep-
ers where we are going, let me tell you.
We '11 have to make our own trails over snow-
covered mountains, across glaciers, and through
canons, but the prize is there, boys, for those
who have the grit to win out."

"You talk about knowing Alaska," put in an-
other, scornfully, "and you see there nothing
but fish, big game, and the chance to find some
of the yellow dust that drives men mad. It 's
a fairer land than you have ever even dreamed
of, with greener pines and nobler fiords than
Norway can show, and mountains more sublime
than the Alps. Do you know it 's a country
that will feed a people and give them homes
where the air is fresh and fragrant with snow,
sunshine, and flowers ? You hunters and fishers
and prospectors who go to Alaska just to make
money and then run away to spend it, make me
tired. You look upon that magnificent country
— white man's country, if there ever was such —
as nothing but so much loot."

"You fellows remind me of the story of the
blind men and the elephant," said Bishop

211

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Rowe, with his hearty laugh. "You remember
how one felt a tusk and said the creature was
just like a spear, while the one who touched the
side said it was a wall, and the last beggar who
chanced to get hold of the tail said it was like
a rope. There is evidently more than one
Alaska, and each one knows only the country
that he has seen. We shall soon see for our-
selves— what we shall see."

Of all the men who landed at Juneau, Bishop
Rowe was in a sense the only real Alaskan, for
he alone intended to make his home in the coun-
try. Even the man who had called it "white
man's country" was going there in the charac-
ter of tourist-reporter to take away impressions
of its marvelous scenery; its inspiring con-
trasts of gleaming, snow-capped peaks and
emerald watersides vivid with many-colored
blossoms; its picturesque Indian villages with
their grotesque totem poles; its gold "dig-
gings" with their soldiers of fortune.

Everybody was busy getting together the
necessary outfit for the journey on the trail
across the coast range to the Yukon, along
which the adventurers made their way to Circle

212

Bishop Peter T. Rowe

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

City, a mining center eight hundred and fifty
miles from Juneau.

On April 22, the bishop, with one companion,
left the seaport for his first journey in the land
of his adoption. Sometimes he was climbing
steep mountains where he had to dig out with
his stick a foothold for each step ; sometimes he
was walking through narrow canons not more
than twelve or fourteen feet in width, where
overhanging rocks and snow slides threatened
to crush him ; sometimes he was creeping along
the edge of cliffs so high and sheer that he dared
not trust himself to look down; sometimes he
was treading warily over the frozen crust of a
stream whose waters seethed and roared omi-
nously beneath the icy bridge.

As he pushed on, hauling his heavy sled (it
weighed, with the camping outfit and provisions,
four hundred and fifty pounds), you can imag-
ine that he had an appetite for his dinner of
toasted bacon and steaming beans. Sometimes
his gun would bring down a wild duck to vary
this hearty fare.

He knew what it was, however, to be too tired
to eat or sleep. That was when he was felling

215

HEROES OF TO-DAY

trees and whipsawing the logs into boards for
a boat. The men who had promised to furnish
him with transportation as soon as the ice was
broken up had not kept their agreement, and
he faced the open season with no means of con-
tinuing his journey.

"If you '11 just camp here with us fellows
for a spell, comrade, " said the men in whose
company he found himself at Carabou Cross-
ing, "we '11 all pitch in and give you a day's
help when we Ve got our own lumber sawed."

Then the good-natured miners had a shock
of genuine surprise. The preacher whom they
proposed to pull out of his difficulty proved
that he was neither a tenderfoot nor a shirker.

"I think I '11 see what I can do for myself
before I ask you men to come to the rescue,"
he said.

The blows of his ax resounded merrily as he
put himself to his task. Then after the logs
were rolled on the saw-pit he whipped out the
lumber in something less than two days. When
night came his muscles ached but his pulses
sang.

"What a friend a tree is!" he said, smiling
216

SHEPHEKD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

happily at the leaping, crackling flames.
* ' Here it is giving us a rousing fire and boughs
for our beds, as well as lumber for our boats
and gum and pitch to make them watertight. "

The rude but plucky little craft was finished
and mounted on runners to take it to the place
of launching before those who had volunteered
to help him had their own lumber sawed. The
rough men were much impressed. This mis-
sionary who was not above sharing their toil
and hardships must have a message that was
worth hearing. They gathered about him with
respectful attention when he said:

"We 're hundreds of miles from a church
here, but that doesn't mean that we don't feel
the need of one, does it? Let 's have a service
together about the camp-fire before we go on
our way."

The firelight shone on softened faces and
earnest eyes as the gold seekers sat gazing up
at the man who spoke to them simply and fear-
lessly of the treasures of the spirit which he
that seeks will be sure to find.

' ' You men have given up comfort and friends
and risked life itself to find your golden treas-

217

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ure, ' ' he said. * ' Some of you may win the prize
you seek; many more may be doomed to dis-
appointment. Will you not take with you
something that will make you strong to bear
either the temptations of success or the trials
of failure? It is yours for the asking; only
reach out your hand and you will touch it.

"'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking."

As Bishop Eowe talked, his hearers seemed
to lean on his words as naturally as one leans
on a trusty staff when the way is rough and
steep. And when he had gone, much that he
had said lingered with them through the fever-
ish rush forward and the long desolate winter
that followed, when the cracking ice and the
howling wolves alone broke the awful stillness
about their remote camp.

The steadfast faith and the cheerful endur-
ance of our pioneer missionary were tried
more than once as he drew his boat, which
weighed with the load of provisions some 1400
pounds, over the frozen surface of a chain of
lakes where he had to exercise ceaseless vigi-
lance to avoid bad ice. Then there were three

218

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

days of ice breaking after the spring thaw was
well under way before he could begin to paddle
with the stream.

It was now the pleasantest time of the year —
the time of the long days when you can almost
see the grasses and flowers shoot up as they
take advantage of every moment of life-giving
sunshine. The warm wind brought the smell
of clover and the voice of leaping water-falls.
It seemed as if one could taste the air; it was
so fresh with the pure snow of the heights and
so golden-sweet with sunshine and opening
blossoms.

The paddler on the Yukon, however, cannot
become too absorbed in the beauties by the way.
There are dangerous rapids and unexpected
cross currents that require a steady head and
a strong hand, and the new bishop frequently
had reason to be grateful for the skill in canoe-
ing that he had won in his camping days in
Canada.

If he had been out for game he would have
found more than one opportunity for a good
shot. There were brown bears looking at him
from the brush along the banks, and bears fish-

219

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ing for salmon in the swift water. Sometimes
he caught a glimpse of an antlered moose
among the trees, and now and then he saw an
eagle swoop down to seize a leaping fish in
its claws. Flocks of ducks with their funny,
featherless broods scurried over the water, dis-
turbed by the sudden appearance of the canoe.

The bishop visited the Indian villages along
the stream, as well as the missions that had
been planted at various points to minister to
the natives. Imagine what his cheering pres-
ence meant to the lonely workers in the wilder-
ness. As he went along he was planning how
best he might meet the needs of the people with
new missions, hospitals, and schools.

"Why is it that all you tough, rough-riding
Alaskan fellows set such store by this Bishop
Rowe?" a man from Fairbanks was asked.

"Well, for one thing his works have not been
in words but in deeds," was the reply. "Let
me tell you how it was with us when he came
over the ice from Circle City in the winter of
1903. He looked us over and saw the thing
we most needed. He saw no dollars, either in
sight or in the future. He saw only that a poor

220

SHEPHEKD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

lot of human creatures, up against a dead-hard
proposition, needed a hospital. 'You have the
ground,' said he; 'you raise half the money and
I will leave the other half for the building.
Then I will take care of the nurses, medicines,
and everything else you need.' Of course he
is for his church, but he and his church are
always for their people — and their people are
any that fare over the trail."

It was soon said of this master missionary
that he was "the best musher in Alaska,"
"Mush!" or "Mush on!" is the cry that the
men on the winter trails give to their dog teams.
It is, perhaps, a corruption of the French word
marchons, which means "Go on!" There is
seldom a winter when Bishop Rowe does not
travel from one to two thousand miles with his
team of six huskies to visit his people.

Da you picture him sitting comfortably
wrapped in fur robes on the sledge while the
dogs pull him as well as the store of food for
the six weeks' journey on which he is bound?
Look again! There he is walking on snow-
shoes ahead of the team leader; he is "breaking
trail" for the dogs who have all they can do

221

HEROES OF TO-DAY

to drag the laden sled. In order to lighten
their load he selects a tree at each camping-
place to serve as a landmark, and hides there
a store of food for the return trip.

4 'That is a plan that works well unless the
sly wolverines manage to get on the scent of
the cache," he said. "But you must go as
light as possible when you travel over a waste
of snow, and are forced at times to cover forty
miles a day. It is a trip that takes all the
unnecessary fat off you ; and you get as strong
as a mule and as hungry as a bear. ' *

You would think that the mountain climbing,
canoeing, and marching on snow-shoes which
are part of his yearly round would be all that
he could possibly need to take off the "unneces-
sary fat" and keep him in the "pink of train-
ing." The winter trip with the dog sledge,
however, brings many situations when life it-
self depends upon one's physical fitness. In
preparation for those journeys, the bishop
goes through a regular series of exercises —
long distance running, hill-climbing, and even
jumping rope. The following extract from one
of his diaries kept during a six weeks ' trip over

222

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

the Arctic waste when mountains and valleys
alike were muffled in a white silence, and all
the streams were voiceless, spell-bound rivers
of ice, will show what making the rounds in the
diocese of all Alaska means:

Our sled was loaded with robes, tent, stove, axes, cloth-
ing, and food for sixteen days for dogs and selves. Wind
blew the snow like shot in our faces. I kept ahead of
the dogs, leading them, finding the way. We had to cross
the wide river; the great hummocks made this an ordeal;
had to use the ax and break a way for the dogs and sled.
In the midst of it all the dogs would stop; they could
not see; their eyes were closed with the frost; so I rubbed
off the frost and went on. The time came when the dogs
would — could — no longer face the storm. I was forced
to make a camp. It was not a spot I would choose for
the purpose. The bank of the river was precipitous, high,
rocky, yet there was wood. I climbed one hundred feet
and picked out a spot and made a campfire. Then re-
turned to the sled, unharnessed the dogs, got a "life line,"
went up and tied it to a tree by the fire. By means of
this we got up our robes and sufficient food. Here after
something to eat we made a bed in the snow. ... It was
a night of shivers. Froze our faces.

After a sleepless night we were up before daybreak. It
was still blowing a gale; had some breakfast; tried to
hitch the dogs, but they would not face the storm, so I
resigned myself to the situation and remained in camp.
It was my birthday, too. I kept busy chopping wood for
the fire. ... In carrying a heavy log down the side of
the mountain, I tripped, fell many feet, and injured shoul-
der slightly.

223

HEROES OF TO-DAY

After another cold and shivering night we found the
wind somewhat abated and without breakfast hitched up
the dogs, packed sled, and were traveling before it was
light. . . . Early in the day while piloting the way I en-
countered bad ice, open water, broke through and got wet.
After that I felt my way with ax in hand, snow-shoes
on feet, until it grew dark. In the darkness I broke
through the ice and escaped with some difficulty. . . .

A worker in a lonely frontier post where
there were plentiful discouragements once said :
* ' When I am tempted to think that I am having
a hard time I just think of Bishop Rowe. Then
I realize that it is possible to feel that creature
comforts are not matters of first importance.
How splendidly he proves that a man can rise
above circumstances, and still march on and
laugh on no matter what may be happening
about him or to him!"

We have seen how the Bishop of Alaska fares
in winter when the world is a vast whiteness
save only for the heaving dark of the sea ; when
the avalanches are booming on the mountains;
when the winds are sweeping through the
canons, and all the air is filled with ice-dust.
What can he accomplish through these journeys
that he should forego all comfort and risk life
itself!

224

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

First, he brings light and cheer to the home-
sick miners — to the dull-eyed, discouraged men
who have struggled and toiled without success,
and to the excited, watchful ones who fear to
lose what they have won.

"Where are all the people going?" asked a
stranger in Fairbanks one Sunday.

"Bishop Rowe is here," replied the hotel
clerk smilingly. "Everybody turns out when
he comes to town. You see," he added
thoughtfully, "he somehow knows what a man
needs no matter where he is or what he is.
There is something that goes home to each one
who listens."

But the adventurers from civilization are not
the bishop's chief care. His first thought is
for the Indians and Eskimos, who, if they have
gained somewhat, have suffered much through
the coming of the white men to their shores.

"Our people have for the most part been
consistently engaged in plundering Alaska," he
said. "We have grown rich on its salmon and
furs, while the natives who formerly had plenty
feel the pinch of famine and cold. We take
from the country everything we can get and

225

HEROES OF TO-DAY

even make the Indians pay a tax on the trees
they cut down ; but we do nothing for the land
in the way of building roads and bridges, or
for the people in the way of protecting them
from the evils that the coming of the white men
has brought upon them."

In so far as it lies in his power, the bishop
tries to atone for this despoiling of Alaska by
working whole-heartedly for the natives — teach-
ing them more wholesome ways of living, giv-
ing them food and medicine in times of distress,
providing sawmills to give them work, intro-
ducing reindeer to supply clothing in the place
of the seals that are fast disappearing, and
building churches, schools, and hospitals. He
has, besides, gone to Washington and described
to the President and the lawmakers the pitiable
state of the Alaskan Indians, and pleaded for
reservations where they could first of all be
taught how to maintain health under the new
conditions of life that have been forced upon
them, and then given suitable industrial train-
ing and the chance of earning a livelihood. The
laws that have been passed to secure fair play
for the original Alaskans have been won largely

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

through the persistent and effective champion-
ship of Bishop Rowe.

See him as he journeys down the Yukon in
a scow loaded with lumber for a mission build-
ing. He has with him just one helper and
three little Indian children whom he is taking
to a school at Anvik. At night he is at the
bow, watching to guard against the dangers
of the stream. Sometimes the children wake
up and cry when a great slide from the bank
— tons on tons of rock and earth — shoots into
the river with a terrific boom. Sometimes,
when the hooting of an owl or the wail of a
wild beast pierces the stillness they huddle to-
gether, too frightened to make a sound. Then
the good bishop stoops over and pats them on
the head kindly, saying a comforting word or
two which reminds them that nothing can pos-
sibly harm them while he is near.

A storm of rain and wind that lasts all night
and all the next day drenches them through and
through. The children, who are wet and cold,
creep close to their friend. "Etah, etah" (my
father), they say, looking up at him pitifully*
In a flash he remembers that not far off is a

227

HEROES OF TO-DAY

deserted log cabin which he chanced to find on
a previous journey. Making a landing, they
follow him along the bank and at nightfall reach
the blessed shelter. Here they build a rousing
fire and dry their clothes. As they sit about
the blazing logs they fancy that all the sun-
beams that had shone upon the growing tree
are dancing merrily in the flames. The next
morning the sun comes out as if to make up
for all the stormy days and nights that have
ever vexed weary travelers, and they go on
their way with renewed courage.

"The two qualities most needed in Alaska,"
said Bishop Bowe, "are an instinct for finding
one's way, and bulldog grit." He certainly
has these two requisites, as well as "animate
faith and love." Wherever he goes — to remote
Indian villages or Eskimo igloos; to deserted
mining centers whose numbers have dwindled
from thousands to a forlorn score ; to thriving
cities like Sitka, Nome, and Fairbanks, which
have electric lights, telephones, and many of the
luxuries as well as the comforts of civilization
— he brings a message of hope. To those who
hunger without knowing what they lack, he

228

SHEPHERD OF "THE GREAT COUNTRY"

brings the Bread of Life — the glad tidings of
a God of love.

In 1907, it was decided to transfer Bishop
Rowe from his frontier post to Colorado.
"You have served faithfully where the laborers
are few and the hardships are many," it was
said. "You must now guard your powers for
a long life of service."

"I appreciate with deep gratitude the kind-
ness," replied the missionary bishop, "but I
feel that in view of present conditions I must
decline the honor of the transfer and continue
in Alaska, God helping me."

So the Shepherd of "the Great Country" is
faithful to his charge and his flock, asking not
a lighter task but rather greater strength for
the work that is his. Like the giant-saint of
the legend, he serves with his might the unseen
King who reigns through love in the hearts of
men.

229

A HERO OF FLIGHT:
SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a ma-
chine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a ma-
chine augments the power of man and the well-being of
mankind.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

A HERO OF FLIGHT

A BOY was lying on his back in a clover-
sweet pasture, looking up dreamily at
the white clouds that were drifting about on
the calm blue sea of the sky. The field sloped
down to the beach, and the salt breath of the
ocean came to him on the passing breeze. All
at once his eye was caught by something that
made him start up suddenly, all alert attention.
It was a sea-gull rising into the air, its wings
flashing white in the bright sunshine.

"How does he do it?" he said aloud. "How
is it that he can float about like that without
any effort I It is just when he begins to mount
into the air that he flaps his wings ; now he is
hardly moving them at all. He seems to be
held up by the air just as a kite is!"

This was not the first time that young Samuel
Langley had watched the flight of the sea-gulls.

233

HEROES OF TO-DAY

And the sight of a hawk circling above the tree-
tops could always set him a-staring.

1 * There must be something about the air that
makes it easy," he pondered. "The birds
know the secret, but I can't even guess it!"

That night at dinner the boy was more than
usually thoughtful.

"Father," he said after a long silence, "don't
you think it might be possible for people to
make some sort of an airship thing to sail
through the air, without any gas bag to carry
it up?"

"Have you heard that there is such a thing
as the law of gravity, son?" quizzed the father,
banteringly. "What goes up must come down,
you know."

"But, Father," the boy persisted, "the
hawks and gulls are much heavier than the air.
There is nothing of the balloon sort about
them."

"But they have wings, my boy, and they
know how to fly/' returned Mr. Langley, look-
ing at the lad's puckered brow with amused
indulgence.

"Well, Father," retorted Sam, flushing under
234

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

the teasing smiles that were directed at him,
"I 'm sure it 's not such a joke after all. Why
shouldn't people learn how to make wings and
to fly!"

"Come down to earth, Samuel, and don't get
too far from the ground in your wonderings, ' *
advised his father. " There are enough prob-
lems on the good old earth to keep you busy.
Your idea has not even the merit of being new
and original. The myths of Greece tell us that
'way back in the legendary past people envied
the flight of birds. But all those who have
tried to do the trick have, like Icarus who went
too near the sun with his marvelous wax wings,
come back to earth rather too abruptly for com-
fort."

As the days went by, Samuel Langley did
indeed turn his attention to other questions, but
the problem suggested by the bird's flight was
not forgotten. Years afterward when he had
become one of the most distinguished scientists
of his time he used often to say: "Knowledge
begins in wonder. Set a child to wondering
and you have put him on the road to under-
standing. "

235

HEROES OF TO-DAY

He often liked to recall the days of his boy-
hood when he had first set his feet on the path
that led to the great interests which made his
life.

1 1 There are two incidents — little chance hap-
penings, you might call them, if you believe in
chance — " he said, "which took root and grew
with the years. One was my discovery of the
fascinations of my father's telescope. I re-
member watching the workmen lay the stones
of Bunker Hill Monument through that glass.
It taught me the joy of bringing far-away things
into intimate nearness. I learned that the man
who knows how to use the magic glasses of
science can say, 'Far or forgot to me is near!' "

The great scientist smiled musingly to him-
self; he seemed to have slipped away from his
friend and the talk of the moment. Was he
back in his boyhood when he first looked at the
moon's face through his magic glass, or was
he pondering over some new problem concern-
ing sun spots which was puzzling learned as-
tronomers the world over!

"What was the other incident you spoke of,
Professor?" reminded his companion timidly,

236

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

for it was not easy to get Dr. Langley to speak
about himself, and the spell of this rare hour
might easily be broken.

"What is it! — oh, yes," he went on, picking
up the thread, "the other epoch-making time
of my young life was the lazy hour when I lay
stretched out in an open field watching the
flight of the hawks and gulls circling overhead.
I noted that their wings were motionless except
when they turned them at a different angle to
meet a new current of wind. I began then
dimly to suspect that the invisible ocean of the
air was an unknown realm of marvelous pos-
sibilities. It may be that that idle holiday
afternoon had more to do with the serious work
of the after years than the plodding hours de-
voted to Latin grammar."

Samuel Langley had a mind of the wonder-
ing— not the wandering — sort. Everything
that he saw set him to questioning, comparing,
and reasoning. When he noticed the curious
way in which nature has made many creatures
so like the place in which they live that they
can easily hide from their enemies, he said to
himself: "It is strange that the insects which

237

HEROES OF TO-DAY

live in trees are green, while those that live on
the ground are brown. It must be that the
ones who were not so luckily colored were
quickly picked off, and that only those that can
hide in this clever way are able to hold their
own." When he noticed that brightly colored
flowers were not so fragrant as white ones, he
said, "The sweet blossoms don't need gay col-
ors to attract their insect friends/* When he
saw early spring vegetables growing in a hot-
bed, he said: "How does that loose covering
keep them warm? There must be something
that makes heat under there." Years later he
said, "I believe the questions that I kept put-
ting to myself every time I went by a certain
garden not far from our house marked the
starting-point of my investigations into the
work of the sun's rays in heating the earth.
The day came when the idea flashed upon me
that the air surrounding our planet acts just
like a hotbed, conserving enough warmth to
make possible the conditions of life we require."
Everything in Samuel Langley's world — ani-
mals, plants, rocks, air, and water — had its won-
der story and its challenge. There was always

238

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

some question to be puzzled over. Science was
not, however, the only passion of his early years.
His delight in beauty was just as keen as his
thirst for knowledge. He noted with loving
appreciation the changing lights and shades of
Nature 's face. He had an eye for * * the look of
things, ' ' which means that he had something of
a gift for drawing.

After completing the course of the Boston
High School, he turned his attention to civil
engineering and architecture. t ' I did not go to
college because I had to think about paying my
own way through life," he said, "and I argued
that a chap who was fond of mathematics and
drawing should be able to do some good work
in the way of building even if he did not suc-
ceed in laying the foundation of either fame or
fortune. Besides, it seemed to me that while
doing work that was not uninteresting, I should
be near the things that were already part of my
life ; there would be chance and encouragement
for further scientific study."

Going to Chicago when he was twenty-three
years of age, Mr. Langley worked for seven
years in his chosen profession, gaining in addi-

239

HEROES OF TO-DAY

tion to a comfortable income, practical business
experience and unusual skill in drafting. All
this time his interest in scientific problems was
pulling him away from the beaten path of prac-
tical achievement. His intellect was of the
hardy, pioneer sort that longs to press on where
man has never ventured — to make new paths,
not to follow in the footsteps of others.

In 1864 the young scientist of thirty years
determined upon a bold move. He definitely
retired from his profession, returned to New
England, and for three years devoted his time
to building telescopes. He knew something of
the magician's joy as he planned and developed
the special features of his ''magic glasses."
The boy who had thrilled over the marvels of
the starry heavens which his father's telescope
had revealed was alive within him, exulting to
find that he could construct instruments many
times more powerful.

"I have never outgrown my love of fairy
books," he said. "To one who spends his time
with the wonders that science reveals, the im-
mortal wonder tales of childhood seem truer
than any other stories. I delight in the adven-

240

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

tures of the youth Who had found the cap of
invisibility; then I turn to my telescope which
brings the invisible into the world that the eye
knows. Children and men of science belong to
the same realm; no one else has the proper ap-
preciation of true magic. "

After his close work with the telescopes, this
lover of macvels spent a happy year in Europe,
visiting observatories, museums, and art gal-
leries. It was at this time that he decided that
astronomy was to be the serious business of
his days, and art the chief delight of his hours
of recreation. He was offered the place of as-
sistant in the Harvard Observatory by Profes-
sor Winlock, in spite of the fact that he had had
no university training.

1 ' This self-made astronomer has a seeing eye,
a careful hand, and the instinct for observa-
tion, ' ' said Joseph Winlock approvingly. ' ' Be-
sides he has, if I am not mistaken, the imagina-
tion to use in a large and constructive way the
facts that his experiments yield. He has the
making of an original scientist. "

His feet once planted on the first round of
the ladder of expert knowledge, advancement

241

HEROES OF TO-DAY

was rapid. It might well seem to many pass-
ing strange that a man who had written noth-
ing, discovered nothing, and who, moreover, had
no brilliant university record behind him, should
at once win recognition from the most learned
specialists of the day.

"What was there about Langley that earned
his rapid promotions?" it was asked.

"There was nothing that remotely hinted at
influence or favoritism," said one who knew
him well. "He was impersonal and retiring
to a degree. But he had in rare combination
an open, alert mind and a capacity for hard
work."

After two years at the Harvard Observatory,
he went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis as
professor of mathematics and director of the
observatory. A year later he accepted the pro-
fessorship of astronomy and physics in the
Western University at Pittsburg. For twenty
years he filled this position and also that of
director of the Allegheny Observatory, which
under his leadership became the center of very
important work.

When he took charge at the new observatory,
242

SAMUEL PIEEPONT LANGLEY

he found no apparatus for scientific observa-
tions beyond a telescope, and no funds avail-
able for the purchase of the absolutely neces-
sary instruments. How was he to obtain the
expensive tools which he required for his work !

"If I can show the practical importance of
astronomical observations, the means will be
forthcoming, " he said.

At this moment a wonderful inspiration came
to the professor. In traveling about the coun-
try he had been strongly impressed with the
need of some standard system of keeping time.
He believed that science ought to be able to
come to the rescue and bring order out of con-
fusion.

"This is my chance, " he now said, as he
looked about his empty observatory. "If I can
prove to the managers of the Pennsylvania
Railroad that I can furnish them with a time-
keeping system that will do away with the in-
convenience of changing time with every forty
or fifty miles of travel and all the troublesome
reckonings and adjustments which that entails,
I feel assured that they will provide the equip-
ment which I need.'*

243

HEEOES OF TO-DAY

It often happens that the learned masters of
science are entirely removed in their interests
and experience from the every-day world of
business. They work in a sphere apart, and the
offices of some practical middleman with an in-
ventive turn of mind are required to make their
discoveries of any immediate value. Professor
Langley, on the contrary, had an appreciation
of the demands of business, as well as the vital
interests of science. He had lived in both
worlds. Now, through his competent grasp of
the needs of such a railroad center as Pittsburg,
where the East and the "West meet, he succeeded
in working out a plan that was so sane and
practical that it immediately recommended it-
self to the busy men in control of transporta-
tion problems. His observatory was provided
with the apparatus for which he longed, and
twice a day it automatically flashed out through
signals, the exact time to all the stations on the
Pennsylvania Eailroad, a system controlling
some eight thousand miles of lines. To Pro-
fessor Langley, more than to any other person
is due the effective regulation of standard time
throughout the country.

244

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

During the years of hard work at Pittsburg,
Professor Langley was invited to join several
important scientific expeditions. These were
the holidays of his busy life. His efficient work
as leader of a coast survey party to Kentucky
in 1869 to observe an eclipse of the sun won
for him the opportunity to join the government
expedition to Spain to study the eclipse of 1870.
In the summer of 1878, he took a party of
scientists to Pike's Peak, and that winter he
went to Mt. Etna for some further experiments
on the heights. An article called " Wintering
on Mount Etna," which appeared in the " At-
lantic Monthly, ' ' proved that he could not only
do important work in original research but that
he could also write about it in a way calculated
to appeal to the average reader.

During these years Professor Langley de-
voted a great deal of time and thought to astro-
physics. This science, which is sometimes
called "the new astronomy," is concerned with
special heat and light problems of the heavenly
bodies — more especially, of course, with investi-
gations and measurements of the radiant en-
ergy of the sun. To carry on his experiments

245

HEROES OF TO-DAY

he invented a wonderful electrical instrument
called the bolometer, which is so delicately con-
structed for measuring heat that when one
draws near to look at it the warmth of his face
has a perceptible effect.

Professor Langley's tests proved that the
lantern of the fire-fly gives a cheaper form of
light than is to be found anywhere else. Here
Nature has demonstrated the possibility of pro-
viding illumination with no waste of energy in
heat or in any other way. All the force goes
into the light, while man's devices for defeat-
ing darkness waste as much as ninety-nine per
cent, of the energy consumed.

The Pittsburg years were rich in the joy of
work well done, but they gave little of the in-
spiration and stimulus that comes from con-
genial companionship. For the most part, he
had to content himself with the society of his
book friends. The number of his solitary hours
may be to a certain extent measured by the
astonishing range of his reading.

"Why, Mr. Langley, I do believe you have
read every book that ever was written!" said
an admiring young lady on one occasion.

246

Samuel Pierpont Langley

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

"Oh, no," he replied dryly, with the hint of
a twinkle in his eyes, "there are six that I have
not read — as yet."

In 1886, when he was offered the position of
assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion at Washington, he accepted without hesita-
tion, because he felt that he would have a chance
for association with his brother scientists.

The next year, when he had succeeded Pro-
fessor Baird as head of the Institution, he at
once inaugurated a change in the character of
its publications. "If the Smithsonian is to live
up to the ideal of its founder 'in increasing
knowledge among men,' the written accounts of
its work must be plain and interesting enough
to appeal to people of ordinary education and
intelligence," he said.

It was largely due to his efforts that the Na-
tional Zoological Park was created. "We must
have not only live books but live specimens,"
he said. "The stuffed and mounted creatures
are well enough in their way, but they have
monopolized too much attention."

For a while there was a small zoo housed in
cages and kennels almost under the eaves of

249

HEROES OF TO-DAY

the Smithsonian offices, until sufficient interest
could be aroused in Congress to secure a tract
of land along Rock Creek for a national park.
Here at last Professor Langley realized his
dream of a pleasure-ground for the people,
where there might be preserved in places like
their natural haunts — on hillsides, in rocky
caves, or along streams — specimens of the ani-
mal life of the world, which is in a large meas-
ure disappearing before the advance of man.
Remembering how his interest in scientific
problems had begun in his childhood when he
had stopped to wonder about the things that
attracted his attention, Professor Langley fitted
up a place in the Smithsonian especially for
children. Opposite the front door, in a room
bright with sunshine, singing birds, and aqua-
riums of darting gold-fish, he put the sort of
things that all boys and girls would like to
see. There you may see the largest and small-
est birds in the world, the largest and smallest
eggs, and specimens of the birds that all chil-
dren meet in their story-books, such as the
raven, rook, magpie, skylark, starling, and
nightingale. There, too, are all sorts of curious

250

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

nests; eggs of water birds that look like peb-
bles ; insects that exactly mimic twigs or leaves,
and so can hide in the most wonderful way;
beautiful butterflies and humming-birds; and
shells, coral, and all kinds of curious creatures
from the bottom of the sea.

It is said that once a lady who sat next Pro-
fessor Langley at a dinner-party and found him
apparently uninterested in all her attempts at
conversation, suddenly asked, "Is there any-
thing at all, Mr. Wiseman, which you really
care to talk about!"

The professor roused himself from his fit of
abstraction with a start. Then he smiled and
said, "Yes, two things — children and f airy-
tales. "

It was the lady's turn to look surprised and
smile.

"Now I understand how you were able to
make that Children's Room so exactly what it
should be," she said. "Only some one who
understood wonder and loved the wonderful
could have done it!"

While Professor Langley was working in this
way to make the institution of which he was

251

HEROES OF TO-DAY

head a greater power for teaching and inspira-
tion in the lives of the people, he was not re-
laxing any of his own efforts as a scientific
investigator. An astrophysical observatory
was founded and there he went on with his
special studies and experiments in regard to the
properties of sunlight. When people wanted to
know the practical value of his minute observa-
tions he used to say:

" All truth works for man if you give it time ;
the application is never far to seek. The ex-
pert knowledge of to-day becomes the inventor's
tool to-morrow."

But while he was working over the problems
of sun-spots, and making drawings of the sur-
face of the sun that bear witness to his patience
no less than to his skill, he became vitally inter-
ested in the subject of mechanical flight. For
at last he had made an opportunity to work on
the problem that had fascinated him ever since
he was a boy. " Nature has solved the prob-
lem of flight, why not, man?" he said.

He soon became convinced that the mathe-
matical formulas given in the books concerning
the increase of power with increase of velocity

252

SAMUEL PIEEPONT LANGLEY

were all wrong. "At that rate, a swallow
would have to have the strength of a man!"
he exclaimed. He devised a sort of whirling
table with surfaces like wings to test with ex-
actness just how much horse-power was re-
quired to hold up a surface of a certain weight
while moving rapidly through the air, and by
this means discovered and demonstrated the
fundamental law of flight, known as Langley's
Law, which tells us that the faster a body travels
through the air the less is the energy required
to keep it afloat.

After proving that birds are held up like
kites by pressure of the air against the under
surface of their wings, he made experiments to
show that their soaring flight is aided by "the
internal work of the wind," that is, by shifts in
the currents of air, particularly by rising
trends, which the winged creatures utilize by
instinct. Watch a hawk as it circles through
the air, dipping its wings now at this angle,
now at that, and you will realize that the wind
is his true and tried ally. He trusts himself to
the sweep and swirl of the air, just as a swim-
mer relies on the buoyancy of the water.

253

HEROES OF TO-DAY

Having demonstrated so much through ex-
periments with his whirling table, Dr. Langley
determined to construct a real flying-machine,
with wide-spreading planes to sustain it in the
air while it was driven along by a steam-engine
which furnished power to the propellers. This
machine, which he called an "aerodrome" (air
run), was put to the test on the sixth of May,
1896. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who was
present at the trial and who took pictures of the
machine in mid-air, declared, ' ' No one who wit-
nessed the extraordinary spectacle of a steam-
engine flying with wings in the air, like a great
soaring bird, could doubt for one moment the
practicability of mechanical flight."

Now that he had succeeded in solving the
problem from the scientific standpoint, Profes-
sor Langley wished to leave the task of develop-
ing the idea in a practical, commercial way to
others. There was, however, a popular demand
for him to carry on his experiments with a
model large enough to carry a man, and $50,000
was appropriated for the purpose by the Gov-
ernment on the recommendation of President

254

SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY

McKinley and the Board of Ordnance and For-
tification of the War Department.

Professor Langley constructed the giant bird-
machine and selected a secluded spot near Quan-
tico on the Potomac below Washington for the
trial. The place was not remote enough, how-
ever, to escape the watchful enterprise of the
newspaper reporters. A number of them
flocked to the spot and actually camped out
near the scene. When any one approached the
great house-boat on which the aerodrome was
perched ready for launching, they got into boats
and gathered about to see everything that
should take place.

And now there happened one of the most
tragic things in all the history of scientific en-
deavor. After vainly waiting for a moment of
comparative privacy for his tests, Dr. Langley
decided that delay was no longer possible, and
in the presence of a cloud of unfriendly wit-
nesses— who had been irritated by the failure of
the perverse scientists to furnish " scoops" for
their papers — essayed the first flight.

A rocket shot up in the air as a signal to the
255

HEROES OF TO-DAY

inventor's assistants to stand by to give aid in
case of mishap. There was a sound as of the
whirring of many mighty wings when the huge
launching- spring shot the aerodrome off from
its resting-place on the house-boat. For a mo-
ment the enormous bird-thing was in the air;
then, instead of rising and soaring, it floundered
helplessly and fell into the water. There had
been a defect in the launching, and the machine
did not have a chance to show what it could do.
This so-called trial was really no test at all.

The reporters, however, had an opportunity
to show what they could do. The next day all
the newspapers of the country printed long
articles describing the spectacular failure of
the man of learning who had left the safe and
sane ways of scientific investigation to attempt
the impossible. "Langley's folly," they called
the poor aerodrome. Men read the story at
their breakfast tables and said with a laugh,
" * Langley's folly' indeed! For the choicest
sort of foolishness you have to go to these fel-
lows with the three-decker brains ! ' '

There was such a popular hue and cry that
Congress refused to allow any more money to

256

SAMUEL PIEEPONT LANGLEY

be used on the flying-machine venture. In vain
did the men who were really in a position to
know and judge, like Professor Bell and other
scientists, say that the seeming failure had
meant nothing at all but an unfortunate acci-
dent at the moment of launching. The ridicule
of the crowd outweighed the words of the wise.
Most people felt just as Dr. Langley's father
had when his boy talked of making a machine
that should sail through the air as a bird does.

Two years after the failure of his hopes, Dr.
Langley died. It was said that his disappoint-
ment had helped to bring on the illness which
caused his death. He never for a moment, how-
ever, lost faith in the future of his airship.

"I have done the best I could in a difficult
task," he said, "with results which, it may be
hoped, will be useful to others. The world
must realize that a new possibility has come
to it, and that the great universal highway over-
head is soon to be opened."

While the crowd was still laughing at the
absurdity of man's attempting to fly, there were
those who were seriously at work on the prob-
lem. After success had crowned their efforts

257

HEROES OF TO-DAY

and their aeroplane was the marvel of the hour,
the Wright brothers declared that it was the
knowledge that the head of the most prominent
scientific institution in America believed in the
possibility of human flight which had led them
to undertake their work. * ' He recommended to
us, moreover, the books which enabled us to
form sane ideas at the outset, " they said. "It
was a helping hand at a critical time, and we
shall always be grateful."

So it was that the work of our hero of flight
was carried on, as he had faith that it would
be. Is it not strange to reflect to-day, when
aeroplanes are used so generally in the Great
War, that it is only a little more than a decade
since people were laughing at "Langley's
folly"!

For ten years the ill-fated aerodrome hung
suspended among the curiosities in the Na-
tional Museum. Then in May, 1914, Mr. Glenn
H. Curtiss obtained permission from the Gov-
ernment to make some trial flights in the first
of the heavier-than-air flying craft. After
making a brief skimming flight above the water
of Lake Keuka, New York, he declared that with

258

SAMUEL PIEBPONT LANGLEY

a more powerful engine the pioneer aeroplane
could sustain itself perfectly in the air.

Returned in triumph to the museum, it now
shares honors with the models of Watt 's steam-
engine, the first steam-boat, and other epoch-
making inventions. "Langley's folly" is com-
pletely vindicated, and Samuel Pierpont Lang-
ley is to-day numbered as chief among the many
heroes of flight.

259

A POET-SOLDIER: RUPERT BROOKE

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there 's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

RUPERT BROOKE.

A POET-SOLDIEE

IT sometimes happens that a hero is remem-
bered more for the true man he was than
for any fair deeds he may have wrought. Such
a man was that "very perfect gentle knight,"
Sir Philip Sidney. A scholar and a poet, a
courtier and a soldier, he walked with grave
men without becoming dull and with kings with-
out becoming vain. In the "spacious times of
great Elizabeth," when brave men like Gren-
ville, Drake, and Ealeigh were finding a new
world overseas for England, and rare souls
like those of the Mermaid Tavern — Ben Jonson,
Christopher Marlowe, and "best Shakespeare,"
himself — were building up a mighty kingdom
of the mind and heart, Sir Philip Sidney was a
bright figure in the realms of high adventure
and of song.

It was not because of epic deeds or lyric
verse, however, that all England mourned the

263

HEROES OF TO-DAY

death of the young soldier. It is not for his
sword or for his song that he lives in the death-
less company of England's heroes, but for his
knightly heart. The oft-repeated tale of how,
mortally wounded, he forgot his own parching
thirst and held out the water they brought him
to a dying comrade, with the words, * ' Thy need
is greater than mine," lives in memory because
in it the true Sidney still lives.

This is the story of one who has been called
the Sidney of our own day — a young poet to
whom the gods, it seemed, had given all their
best gifts, graces of body and of mind. When
it was known that he had gone to "do his bit"
in the great war, people said fearfully, "Death
loves a shining mark ! ' ' When news came that
he was dead, it seemed as if the shadow of loss
could never be lightened. Yet it is not for the
song of the poet or the sacrifice of the soldier
that he will be remembered, but for something
rare and beautiful in the man himself that won
the hearts of all who knew him.

They said of Rupert Brooke, * ' He is the ideal
youth of England — of merry England!" It
seemed as if something of all that was fair and

264

RUPERT BROOKE

brave and free in English days and English
ways had passed into the bright blueness of
his eyes, the warm glow under the tan of his
cheeks, and the live, shining hair that waved
back from his broad clear brow.

From the very beginning his country took
him to herself. He first saw the light of a
summer day at Rugby, under the shadow of
the ivy-covered turrets where that great friend
of boys, Thomas Arnold, was headmaster in
the days of Tom Brown. Rupert's father was
assistant master at the school, and so the boy
grew up on "The Close,'7 where the happy
haunts of many happy boys were the charmed
playground of his earliest years, and the foot-
ball field the ringing plain of his first dreams
of glory and achievement.

"What a wonderful world it was to be born
into, that little England that was mine," said
Rupert, "and how it seemed as if the days
were not half long enough for one to taste all
the joys they brought. How I loved every-
thing— sights and sounds, the feel and breath
of living, stirring things! I loved not only
rainbows and dewdrops sparkling in cool flow-

265

HEROES OF TO-DAY

ers, but also footprints in the dew and washed
stones gay for an hour. Wet roofs beneath
the lamplight had their gleam of enchantment,
and the blue bitter smoke of an autumn fire was
like magic incense."

Most people have eyes to see only that which
is exceptional — the exclamation marks of na-
ture's round, like sunset, moonrise, mountains
wrapped in purple mists, or still water under
a starry sky. They do not see the beauty in
the changes of the common daylight, in familiar
trees, a winding path, and a few dooryard
posies.

But Rupert noted with lingering tenderness
the shapes and colors of all the simple daily
things.

"White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; —
All these have been my loves — "

he said, when dreaming fondly and whimsically
of his boyish days. And how he loved little
shy, half -hidden things — elfin moss flowers,
downy curled-up ferns under the dry leaves,

266

KUPERT BROOKE

the musty smell of the dead leaves themselves
and of the moist, moldy earth. But he was
never one of those who must seek beauty in the
haunts of nature untouched by man. The
splendid copper beech, kingly and kind, in the
headmaster's garden, and Dr. Arnold's own
fern-leaved tree, whose tender gleams and flick-
erings gladdened every one who lingered in its
shade, were dearer than any aloof forest mon-
archs could have been.

It seemed as if all the things that Rupert saw
and loved somehow became part of himself.
Something of the swift life of darting birds, of
quivering winged insects, and furtive scurrying
creatures in fur was in the alert swiftness of
his lithe young body. One found oneself think-
ing of fair fields under a bright sky, of hedge-
rows abloom, of all the singing, golden warmth
that makes an English summer sweet, in looking
into the glowing beauty of the boy's eager
face.

"Rupert can't be spoiled or he would have
been long ago," said one of the Rugby boys.
"He never stops to bother about what people
say of him. Of course a chap who can play

267

HEROES OF TO-DAY

football and carry off school honors at the same
time has something better to think about."

It was true that young Brooke found his
world full of many absorbing things. He was
already entering upon the poet's kingdom.
Words, he found, could work mighty spells.
All the rich pageantry of the days of knights
and crusaders passed before him as a few verses
sounded in his ears. Another line — and he
saw

. . . magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

How splendid it would be to make fine, thrill-
ing things live in words! He knew, though,
that he could never live in the past or in the
dream pictures that fancy painted. His life
was in the real things of the present, and his
song must be of the life he knew and felt.
Would he ever be able to find singing words for
all the singing life about him and within f

Sometimes he all but gave up the trial. How
foolish to bother about writing poems when one
might live them! A rush — a fine scrimmage —
a chance for the goal — life in doing — that was
better than any printed page. As he played on

268

EUPEET BEOOKE

the eleven for Eugby it seemed as if mind and
body were one. Life was strength and swift-
ness, and victory after effort.

But the young athlete, who knew the joy of
playing and winning for his school, swept on
by the cheers of his comrades, knew too the
joy in the play of the mind, urged on by the
secret longing of his heart. This inner athlete
"rejoiced as a strong man to run a race" when
he wrote his prize poem, "The Bastille." He
laughed to himself to think of how he had gone
to the traditions of an old French prison for
inspiration for the finest, freest verse he had
yet made. It was plain now that he must be a
poet. The things he loved should find an im-
mortal life in his song. His successes at cricket
and football could not compare with this tri-
umph. There was no power like the mastery
of the mind.

Going from Eugby to Cambridge, he soon
won an enviable reputation as a man of parts
and a poet of much promise. His keen appreci-
ative mind, his ready wit and personal charm,
made him a favorite with the best men of the
university.

269

HEROES OF TO-DAY

"I do not see why he need be a poet," said
Henry James, the American novelist and critic,
who lived for many years in England. "Any
one who can give such all around satisfaction
as a human being should not be encouraged to
specialize. Surely one who can be so much that
makes life more worth while for every one who
knows him, ought not to have to struggle to do
things. ' '

Rupert had other friends of this mind, but as
the months went by and the youth grew to the
full stature of his manhood, the longing to
win fuller power as a poet grew with him.
More than ever it seemed the one gift he would
have. Not as others had sung, but a new song
for a new age would he sing. He could
never be merely "an idle singer of an empty
day."

In the meantime he carried off the prize of
a fellowship at King's College, which gave him
means to go on with his study and writing.
Just as scholarship helps a student with his col-
lege expenses, so a fellowship gives a graduate
an income to enable him to carry forward some
special work for which he has proved particu-

270

RUPERT BROOKE

lar fitness, and which bids fair to be of value to
the world.

The fellowship allowed Rupert Brooke to
study where he would. He spent a year in
Germany — in Munich and Berlin — but he
learned there, above everything else, a new ap-
preciation of his own England. In his charm-
ing, whimsical poem "Grantchester," written
in Berlin in May, 1912, he pictures his home by
the river Cam in lilac time, and nothing in the
perfectly regulated, efficient German world that
surrounds him can compare with that place his
heart knows.

. . . there the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blowa
An English unofficial rose; . . .
... I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
~?or England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.

Once again at home in the cozy vicarage at
Grantchester, when he tired of his book-littered

271

HEROES OF TO-DAY

study he could walk through the shadowy green
tunnel that the great chestnut trees made beside
the river and dream of the poems that he would
some day have power to call into being. More
than anything else he loved to swim in the
laving waters of "Byron's Pool," at night or in
the magic half-light of dawn. Then it seemed
as if the past and the present were one, and
as if the shades of those other poets who had
found refreshment and inspiration near that
same fair stream came again to linger lovingly
by its waters.

Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by. . . .
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night.

He felt himself in a very real sense "heir of
all the ages" as his body cut and darted through
the water; the life of the past no less than the
life of the present surrounded him, buoyed him

272

Rupert Brooke

EUPERT BROOKE

up. His clean strokes gave him a sense of
happy mastery.

Diving, however, was another matter. Again
and again he made the trial, but always landed
flat. The unfeeling surface of Lord Byron's
pool would all but slap the breath out of his
defenseless body, but he ever came up gallantly
to a new plunge until his muscles had learned
their trick. What joy when he won his first
happy high dive — "into cleanness leaping"
with keen lithe grace. That morning, sky and
water were one tender, rose-tinged, rippling
coolness of silver gray, and the breakfast spread
in the dewy garden was a feast for gods and
heroes. The eggs were golden fare indeed, and
the honey tasted of hawthorn and apple blos-
soms.

With a like persistency, he practised diving
of another sort. Again and again he essayed
the plunge far below the surface of every-day
thoughts and fancies in the hope of bringing
up the perfect pearl of his dreams — a poem in
which the white light of truth should be all
fair-rounded, pure-gleaming beauty. "I can
feel the one thing that is worth while, and it

275

HEROES OF TO-DAY

seems as if I had it in my hand," he mourned,
"but when I look there is only a wisp of sea-
weed, and a shell or two with echoes in their
pearly coils of the eternal whisper of the
waves!"

"Your life is too much an unbroken round
of happy happenings," hinted one of his friends.
"If you could run away into the wilds for a
time — away from your many admiring friends
and the chatter of afternoon teas and tennis
courts — you might find yourself more in touch
with the big things you long for."

"I think I '11 try a trip to America," resolved
the young poet. "There may be some sort of
a new world still to be discovered in the States
or Canada — or beyond among the islands of
the South Seas."

In his "Letters from America," which ap-
peared first in the "Westminster Gazette" and
were afterward published with a biographical
introduction by Henry James, we have some of
his off-hand impressions of the New World.
We get glimpses of New York Harbor at night
and in the early morning, as a poet sees it.
We see the crowds and electric glaro of Broad-

276

RUPERT BROOKE

way with something of the detached amusement
that a careless and idly curious traveler from
another planet might feel. And we see a Har-
vard-Yale baseball game and the 1913 Com-
mencement at Cambridge with the eyes of that
elder Cambridge across the Atlantic. This is
the way the one-time cricketer and football
champion viewed his first "ball game."

When I had time to observe the players, who were prac-
tising about the ground, I was shocked. They wear dust-
colored shirts and dingy knickerbockers, fastened under
the knee, and heavy boots. They strike the English eye
as being attired for football, or a gladiatorial combat,
rather than a summer game. The very close-fitting caps,
with large peaks, give them picturesquely the appearance
of hooligans. Baseball is a good game to watch, and in
outline easy to understand, as it is merely glorified round-
ers. A cricketer is fascinated by their rapidity and skill
in catching and throwing. There is excitement in the
game, but little beauty except in the long-limbed "pitcher,"
whose duty it is to hurl the ball rather farther than the
length of the cricket-pitch, as bewilderingly as possible.
In his efforts to combine speed, mystery, and curve, he gets
into attitudes of a very novel and fantastic, but quite
obvious, beauty.

One queer feature of this sport is that unoccupied mem-
bers of the batting side, fielders, and even spectators, are
accustomed to join in vocally. You have the spectacle of
the representatives of the universities endeavoring to frus-
trate or unnerve their opponents, at moments of excite-
ment, by cries of derision and mockery, or heartening their

277

HEROES OF TO-DAY

own supporters and performers with exclamations of "Now,
Joe!" or "He's got them!" or "He's the boy!" At the
crises in the fortunes of the game, the spectators take a
collective and important part. The Athletic Committee ap-
points a "cheer-leader" for the occasion. Every five or ten
minutes this gentleman, a big, fine figure in white, springs
out from his seat at the foot of the stands, addresses the
multitude through a megaphone with a "One! Two!
Three !" hurls it aside, and, with a wild flinging and swing-
ing of his body and arms, conducts ten thousand voices
in the Harvard yell. ... It all seemed so wonderfully
American, in its combination of entire wildness and entire
regulation, with the whole just a trifle fantastic. . . .

"The glimpses you give of the * States' are
brief and, for the most part, superficial," we
accused him, not unjustly. "You approach
what you are pleased to call our * rag-time civ-
ilization* in a rag- time mood.'*

"You delightful Americans are too sensi-
tive," he replied with his irresistible smile.
"Of course no mere Briton could do you justice
in a few random, hastily-flung newspaper let-
ters. One of these days I hope to work up these
trivial jottings in some more thoughtful and
not unworthy fashion."

He describes Niagara Falls, the Canadian
Rockies, and the South Seas with a poet's ap-
preciation, but with an irrepressible homesick-

278

RUPERT BROOKE

ness for his little England. He wonders and
admires, but misses the haunting echoes of
humanity, the sense of a loving, lingering past,
that make the English landscape dear :

It is indeed a new world. How far away seem those
grassy, moonlit places in England that have been Roman
camps or roads, where there is always serenity, and the
spirit of a purpose at rest, and the sunlight flashes upon
more than flint ! Here one is perpetually a first-comer. . . .
The flowers are less conscious than English flowers, the
breezes have nothing to remember, and everything to prom-
ise. There walk, as yet, no ghosts of lovers in Canadian
lanes. . . . There is nothing lurking in the heart of the
shadows, and no human mystery in the colors, and neither
the same joy nor the kind of peace in dawn and sunset that
older lands know. . . .

In the perfect lazy content of the South Pa-
cific isles, that are, he says, "compound of all
legendary heavens," Rupert Brooke led a bliss-
ful, lotus-eating existence. Nowhere had he
even imagined such serene bodily well-being as
he found darting, floating, and dreaming
through the irised waves, lulled by the faint
thunder of the surf on the distant reef. It
seemed, too, that this must be the seventh heaven
of song. If swimming and poetry had been
all, home and friends might have called in vain.

279

HEROES OF TO-DAY

But the young poet's love of England was proof
against every beguiling lure. Do you remem-
ber how Tennyson in his " Palace of Art," after
showing pictures of every sort of loveliness —
beautiful, enchanting, magical glimpses of many
lands — turns at last to this scene as best of
all?—

And one, an English home — gray twilight poured

On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep — all things in order stored,

A haunt of ancient Peace.

Even so Rupert Brooke, from his South Sea
paradise, longed for the "ancient peace" of the
old vicarage by the River Cam. Never for a
moment did he forget that he was England's
— flesh of her flesh, soul of her soul.

Soon after his return from his wander year,
before his joy in all the dear home ways had
lost any of its new zest, it seemed as if the
old comfortable order of things might pass
away forever. The face of his world was
changed in a day. From a brand fired some-
how, somewhere, in the mysterious Balkans, all
Europe was suddenly ablaze. England awoke
from her preoccupation with her own family

280

EUPEBT BROOKE

difficulties — the Irish Home-rule question, the
disputes between capital and labor, and the mili-
tant suffragettes. She could not see Belgium
and France destroyed. Englishmen who had
been reading with incredulous amazement the
daily reports of the threatening violence of the
continental misunderstanding, and congratu-
lating themselves on their sane and secure aloof-
ness, awoke to find that they were at war with
Germany and Austria.

Rupert Brooke was camping out that fateful
August of 1914 in a place remote from news-
papers with their rumors of war. Away on a
sailing trip, he heard no news of any sort for
the space of four days. Then on his return,
as he stepped out on the beach with singing
pulses and the happy tang of the salt spray
on his lips, a telegram was put in his hands:
"We 're at war with Germany. England has
joined France and Russia," it read.

It was as if all the winds of heaven had passed
in a moment into a dreadful, breathless calm.
In the stunned and sultry stillness that en-
gulfed him, his whole being hung helpless like
an empty sail. He ate and drank as one in a

281

HEROES OF TO-DAY

dream, and then went out alone to the top of
a hill of gorse, where he sat looking broodingly
at the sea and trying to understand. Over and
over he repeated the words, "England at war —
war with Germany ! Germany! ..." Scraps
of memories — pleasant, appealing, and humor-
ous— floated by like bits of remembered tunes :
the convivial glitter of a Berlin cafe ; the restful
charm of a quiet-colored summer evening at
Munich; the merry masquerade and revelry of
carnival time; the broad peasant women sing-
ing at their work in the fields. Could it be that
all the wholesome, friendly world he knew there
had changed — had become a menace, a thing
to be hated?

Not only the Germany he knew, but the whole
world, was trembling. The earth was not the
stable place of solid content and cheerful
achievement he had always taken for granted.
A shrinking, quaking nightmare of change had
seized the foundations of the universe in its
trembling grip. The months ahead loomed
gaunt and strange — no days for happy work;
no quiet evenings for untroubled friendship and
affection; no time to "loaf and invite one's

282

EUPERT BROOKE

soul"; no place for play, for music, for poetry,
for anything that made life worth living. An
age "of blood and iron'* had swallowed up the
golden age. England would be merry England
no longer.

England ! The name rang in his ears like a
knell. England invaded! "I realized with a
sudden tightening of the heart," he said, "that
the earth of England was like a loved face, like
a friend's honor — something holy. The full
flood of what England meant to my inmost self
swept me on from thought to thought. Gray,
uneven little fields, and small ancient hedges
rushed before me, wild flowers, elms and
beeches, gentleness, sedate houses of red brick,
proudly unassuming, a countryside of rambling
hills and friendly copses — the England that had
given me life and light!"

England! The name was now a trumpet
call ! What were the piping times of peace to
this great moment when he could go out as
England's son to meet her foes, to keep her
sacred soil safe from the invaders' tread?
Aloud he said grimly, "Well, if Armageddon 'a
on, I suppose one should be there."

283

HEROES OF TO-DAY

It seemed to many as if this terrible war
must indeed be the mysterious Armageddon,
darkly foreshadowed in the Book of Revelation
as the war of wars, when the "kings of the
earth and the whole world" should gather for
the battle that would usher in the great day
of God. It was to be the war to end war.

Rupert Brooke, a sub-lieutenant of the Royal
Naval Division, was one of that brave, futile
company of Englishmen that were hastily flung
across the Channel to the defense of Antwerp.
Crouching in ditches, rifles in hand, they waited
the approach of an unseen enemy whose big
guns were shelling the outer forts from a point
beyond the horizon line. There was nothing
that the bravest could do but lie there amid the
whistling, screaming shells, and fall back as
ordered when the range of the heavy fire ad-
vanced. The battle was fought by the great
cannon and the scouting aeroplane that circled
high overhead and signaled the range to the
distant battery.

When the forts crumbled before the bombard-
ment— pitiful hopes of the old order before the
deadly engines of the new — the city was a place

284

RUPERT BROOKE

of terror and desolation. The hideous din of
bursting shells, the crash of falling houses and
shattering glass, mingled with the terrified cries
of distracted fugitives. The young poet-sol-
dier, marching in a night retreat under a black
sky, lighted fitfully by the glare of burning vil-
lages, saw the pathetic multitude of helpless
refugees hurrying eastward. There were two
small children trying to help their mother push
a wheelbarrow piled with clothing on which
sat the feeble, trembling grandmother. An-
other family had loaded all their most cherished
possessions in a little milk-cart, pulled by a
panting dog, while a heavy-eyed lad of nine
pushed from behind and watched to see that
nothing was dropped by the way. Aged peas-
ants with bundles on their backs tottered by,
and mothers with tiny babies in their arms
trudged wearily along, trying to comfort the
frightened children who ran by their side or
clung to their skirts. All had the dazed faces
of the victims of flood or fire, who flee from the
place that was home to the uncertain refuge of
outer strangeness.

It seemed to Rupert Brooke that the suffering
285

HEROES OF TO-DAY

he saw was his own As in the old Rugby time,
when everything that the days brought — honest
work, hearty play, and happy comradeship, in
a fair English land under peaceful skies — was
taken up as food for his eager life and made
a part of himself, so now it seemed that body
and soul alike tasted every grief and distress
that can come to helpless humanity. There
were new depths in the brave blue eyes that
had seen defeated hopes and yet never doubted
that right would triumph. The face that had
before expressed promise, now showed power.

All through the trying weeks that followed
in his training-camp in England, he carried
with him the memory of those tragic days in
Belgium. "I would not forget if I could," he
said steadily. "Remembering is sharing."
And steadily, with a strength that ever cries,
"We 're baffled that we may fight better!" he
looked past the darkness of the present to the
victory that his spirit saw.

The hard monotony of the days became glori-
ous. All his life was alight with the fervor of
his love for his native land and his longing to
serve her. There was room in his heart for but

286

EUPERT BROOKE

one thought — England ! And in the singleness
of his devotion he felt a wonderful peace that
outer happenings could not give or take away.
He was safe from the chances of the changing
days — safe with "things undying. " Safe! —
That word which sometimes makes men craven,
sounded in his ears like a note of triumph ; and
the lines of a new song came to his lips :

"We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing.

We have gained a peace unshaken by pain forever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,

Secretly armed against all death's endeavor;
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;

And if these poor limbs die, safest of all."

A wonderful thing had happened. The
young soldier who had lost many things those
first weeks of the war — carefree days and
nights, the joy and bright confidence of youth —
had found his man's soul. And the maker of
verses had become a true poet. In losing his
life he had found it, and found, too, the one gift
he had long sought in vain.

Rupert Brooke had learned to "see life stead-
ily and see it whole. ' ' The five ' ' 1914 sonnets ' '
have the wise simplicity, the deep feeling, and
the large vision that belong to great poetry.

287

HEROES OF TO-DAY

When the poet-soldier embarked with the troops
that were sent on the ill-starred Dardanelles
campaign, he had the joy of knowing that what-
ever might befall, something of his inmost life
would live forever in immortal verse to stir the
hearts of living men.

He never reached Gallipoli. On April 23,
1915, the day of St. Michael and St. George, he
died, not in battle, but of illness on a French
hospital-ship. Early in April he had suffered
a sunstroke, but had apparently recovered.
Then it was known that he was the victim
of blood-poisoning. "Death loves a shining
mark!" and "Whom the Gods love!"— The
unspoken words gripped the hearts of his com-
rades with chill fear, yet it seemed unbelievable
that this radiant young life should be snuffed
out.

The poet, himself, had a definite premonition
of the end — During the days of fever, his
mind found now and again a cool peace in the
memories of the past. He was a Eugby boy
again. Now he sat in the chapel, looking at the
light as it fell, jeweled green, blue, and ruby-
red, through the stained glass window of the

288

KUPERT BROOKE

Wise Men, that Dr. Arnold had brought from
an old church at Aerschot, near Louvain.
Louvain — Belgium! He could not lie there
quietly; his country needed him. He moved
suddenly as if about to rise, and a nurse bent
over him anxiously. But — once more he was
at Rugby, standing before the statue of the au-
thor of "Tom Brown" and spelling out its in-
scription as he had when a child : ' ' Watch ye.
Stand fast in the faith. Quit ye like men. Be
strong." — Again he was on the porch leading
to the quadrangle where the boys were assem-
bled for house singing. How the "Floreat,
floreat, floreat, Rugbeia" rang out!

Was it not getting very dark? He could
scarcely see the white figure of the nurse. Per-
haps there was going to be a storm. . . . He
remembered a hurricane at Rugby when he was
only eight years old — the "big storm," they al-
ways called it. Many of the fine elms were laid
low, among others the one survivor of Tom
Brown's "three trees."

* ' Think of all the years of sun and wind that
have been made into the magnificent strength
of that tree," some one had mourned. "And

289

HEROES OF TO-DAY

now see it snapped like a straw before the fury
of a single hour!'*

" Perhaps it 's happier to go like a warrior in
battle, than just to grow old and die little by
little," the boy had said. He had somehow
dimly felt that the splendid spirit of the tree
— the life that ever flickered golden-green in the
sunlight and danced in joyous abandon in the
May breeze — had fared forth on the wings of
the wind, a part of the brave spirit of things
that deathless goes on forever from change to
change. . . .

They buried him at night, carrying his body
by torchlight to an olive grove on the isle of
Scyros, a mile inland on the heights. "If you
go there," writes Mr. Stephen Graham, "you
will find a little wooden cross with just his name
and the date of his birth and his death (1887-
1915) marked in black." One who knew him
said, "Let his just epitaph be: 'He went to war
in the cause of peace and died without hate that
love might live. '

Better than any inscription or memorial,
however, are the words of his own poem, The
Soldier, in which his love for his country still

290

RUPERT BROOKE

lives. It echoes to-day in the hearts of many
who, at their country's call, "go to war in the
cause of peace."

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

291

A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD:
HERBERT C. HOOVER

I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem
a matter of indifference to me.

TERENCE.

A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

THIS is the story of a young hero of to-day
—of a leader who has, we may well hope,
as many rich, useful years before him as those
that make the tale we are about to tell.

History is not often willing to call a man
happy — or a hero — while life lies ahead of him.
Time can change everything. Time alone can
prove everything. We must wait for the judg-
ment of time, it is said.

We feel very sure, however, of the worth of
the work of Herbert Clark Hoover, the man
who gave up a business that meant the director-
ship of more than 125,000 workers in order that
he might give his time and his powers to the
task of feeding ten million helpless people in
war-ravaged Belgium and northern France.

"If England could have availed herself of
such talent for organization as H. C. Hoover
has displayed in feeding the Belgians, we

295

HEROES OF TO-DAY

should be a good year nearer the end of the
war than we are to-day," said a prominent
member of the British Parliament.

"There is a man who knows how to get things
done!" we are hearing said on every side. "If
America should feel the pinch of war and
famine, Mr. Hoover could meet the problem of
putting us on rations, and there would be no
food riots."

Who is this man who knows how to do things ?
In what school did he learn how to meet emer-
gencies and how to manage men?

They tell us he was a Quaker lad, born on an
Iowa farm, who in his early boyhood moved to
a farm in the far West. Was it because of this
early transplanting — this change to new scenes,
new problems, new interests — that he learned
to see things in a big way and to get a grip on
what really matters in Iowa, in Oregon, in the
world?

"The first thing you think about Hoover,"
said a man who knew him in college, ' ' is that he
is a free soul and feels himself free. Most peo-
ple are more or less hedged in by their own
little affairs. His interests have no walls to

296

HERBERT C. HOOVER

shut him away from other people and their in-
terests. He is a man who is in vital touch with
what concerns other men."

But we come once more to the question : how
did he come by the vital touch which gives him
this power over men and makes him in a very
real sense a citizen of the world? You remem-
ber the exclamation of envious Cassius when
he was protesting to Brutus against the grow-
ing influence of C&sar:

Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great?

Cassius was, of course, speaking in grudging
scorn; but we often find ourselves thinking
quite simply and sincerely that we would like to
know what goes to the making of true power.

Sometimes we like to pretend that we can
explain the making of a great man. We say,
for example, of Lincoln : he early learned what
it meant to meet hardship, so he was strong to
endure ; by hard times and hard work he learned
the value of things, the things that really count ;
he knew what sorrow was, and the faith that is
greater than grief, so he had a heart that could

297

HEROES OF TO-DAY

feel with the sorrows of others and could help
them to win faithfulness through suffering.
Because a truly sympathetic heart beats with
the joys as well as the griefs of others, he cared
for the little things that go to make up the big
thing we call living, and his warm human touch
made him a friend of simple people, with an
understanding of all. Thus it was that he knew
people in a real way and life in a true way, and
so was able to be the leader of a nation in a
time that tried the souls of the bravest. So we
say, and fancy that we have explained Lincoln.
But have we? Many other boys knew toil and
want and sorrow, and many learned much, per-
haps, in that hard school; but there was only
one Lincoln.

We can, in truth, no more explain a great
man than we can explain life itself. How is it
that the acorn has power to take from the earth
and air and sunshine the things that make the
oak-tree, the monarch of the forest? How is
it that of all the oaks in the woods of the world
there are no two exactly alike? How is it that
among all the children in a family, in a school,
in a nation, there are no two really alike?

298

Herbert C. Hoover

HERBERT C. HOOVER

A boy I knew once put the puzzle in this way :
"You would think that twins would be more
truly twins than they are. But when they seem
most twinsy, they 're somehow different, after
all!"

All that we can say is that each child is him-
self alone, and that as the days go by the things
he sees and hears, the things he thinks about
and loves, the things he dreams and the things
he does, are somehow made a part of him just
as the soil and sunshine are made into the tree.

What was it in the Iowa farm life that be-
came a part of the Quaker boy, Herbert
Hoover? He learned to look life in the face,
simply and frankly. Hard work, resolute
wrestling with the brown earth, made his mus-
cles firm and his nerves steady. The passing
of the days and the seasons, the coming of the
rain, the dew, and the frost, and the sweep of
the storm, awoke in his spirit a love of nature
and a delight in nature's laws. "All 's love,
yet all 's law," whispered the wind as it passed
over the fields of bending grain. Since all was
law, one might, by studying the ways of seed
and soil and weather, win a larger harvest than

301

HEROES OF TO-DAY

the steadiest toil, unaided by reason and re-
source, could coax from the long furrows. It
was clear that thinking and planning brought a
liberal increase to the yield of each acre. The
might of man was not in muscle but in mind.

Then came the move to Oregon. How the
Golden West opened up a whole vista of new
ideas 1 How many kinds of interesting people
there were in the world! He longed to go to
college where one could get a bird's-eye view of
the whole field of what life had to offer before
settling down to work in his own particular lit-
tle garden-patch.

"I don't want to go to a Quaker school, or a
college founded by any other special sect," he
said. "I want to go where I will have a chance
to see and judge everything fairly, without
prejudice for or against any one line of
thought."

"The way of the Friends is a liberal enough
way for a son of mine, or for any God-fearing
person," was his guardian's reply. "Thee
must not expect thy people to send thee to a
place of worldly fashions and ideas."

"It looks as if I should have to send myself,
302

HERBERT C. HOOVER

then," said the young man, with a smile in his
clear eyes, but with his chin looking even more
determined than was its usual firm habit.

When Leland Stanford Junior University
opened its doors in 1891, Herbert C. Hoover
was one of those applying for admission. The
first student to register for the engineering
course, he was the distinguished nucleus of the
Department of Geology and Mining. The first
problem young Hoover had to solve at college,
however, was the way of meeting his living ex-
penses.

"What chances are there for a chap to earn
money here?" he asked.

"The only job that seems to be lying about
loose is that of serving in the dining-rooms,"
he was told. "Student waiters are always in
demand."

The young Quaker looked as if he had been
offered an unripe persimmon. l * I suppose it 's
true that 'they also serve who only stand and
wait,' " he drawled whimsically, "but somehow
I can't quite see myself in the part. And any-
way," he added reflectively, "I don't know that
I need depend on a job that is 'lying about

303

HEROES OF TO-DAY

loose.* I should n't wonder if I 'd have to look
out for an opening that hasn't been offered to
every passer-by and become shop-worn."

He had not been many days at the university
before he discovered a need and an opportunity.
There was no college laundry. "I think that
the person who undertakes to organize the
clean-linen business in this academic settlement
will 'also serve,' and he won't have to 'wait*
for his reward!" he said to himself.

The really successful man of business is one
who can at the same time create a demand and
provide the means of meeting it. The college
community awoke one morning to the realiza-
tion that it needed above everything else effi-
cient laundry- service. And it seemed that an
alert young student of mining engineering was
managing the business. Before long it was
clear, not only that the college was by way of
being systematically and satisfactorily served
in this respect, but that, what was even more
important, a man with a veritable genius for
organization had appeared on the campus. It
soon became natural to "let Hoover manage"
the various student undertakings; and to this

304

HERBERT C. HOOVER

day "the way Hoover did things" is one of the
most firmly established traditions of Leland
Stanford.

Graduating from the university in the pio-
neer class of 1895, he served his apprenticeship
at the practical work of mining engineering in
Nevada County, California, by sending ore-
laden cars from the opening of the mine to the
reducing works. He earned two dollars a day
at this job, and also the opportunity to prove
himself equal to greater responsibility. The
foreman nodded approvingly and said,
" There *s a young chap that college couldn't
spoil! He has a degree plus common sense,
and so is ready to learn something from the
experience that comes his way. And he 's al-
ways on the job — right to the minute. Any one
can see he 's one that 's bound for the top 1"

It seemed as if Fate were determined from
the first that the young man should qualify as
a citizen of the world as well as a master of
mines. We next find him in that dreary waste
of New South Wales known as Broken Hill.
In a sun-smitten desert, whose buried wealth of
zinc and gold is given grudgingly only to those

305

HEROES OF TO-DAY

who have grit to endure weary, parched days
and pitiless, lonely nights, he met the ordeal,
and proved himself still a man in No Man's
Land. He looked the desert phantoms in the
face, and behold! they faded like a mirage.
Only the chance of doing a full-sized man's
work remained.

The Broken Hill contract completed, he found
new problems as a mining expert and manager
of men in China. But he did not go to this new
field alone. While at college he had found in
one of his fellow-workers a kindred spirit, who
was interested in the real things that were meat
and drink to him. Miss Lou Henry was a live
California girl, with warm human charm and
a hobby for the marvels of geology. It was not
strange that these two found it easy to fall into
step, and that after a while they decided to fare
forth on the adventure of living together.

It was an adventure with something more
than the thrill of novel experience and the tonic
of meeting new problems that awaited them
in the Celestial Empire. For a long time a very
strong feeling against foreigners and the
changed life they were introducing into China

306

HERBEKT C. HOOVER

had been smoldering among many of the peo-
ple. There was a large party who believed that
change was dangerous. They did not want rail-
roads built and mines worked. The snorting
locomotive, belching fire and smoke, seemed to
them the herald of the hideous new order of
things that the struggling peoples of the West
were trying to bring into their mellow, peace-
ful civilization. The digging down into the
ground was particularly alarming. Surely,
that could not fail to disturb the dragon who
slept within the earth and whose mighty length
was coiled about the very foundations of the
world. There would be earthquakes and other
terrible signs of his anger.

The Boxer Society, whose name meant "the
fist of righteous harmony," and whose slogan
was "Down with all foreigners," became very
powerful. "Let us be true to the old customs
and keep China in the safe old way!" was the
cry of the Boxers. The "righteous harmony"
meant "China first," and "China for the Chi-
nese"; the "fist" meant "Death to Intruders!"
There was a general uprising in 1900, and many
foreigners and Chinese Christians were massa-

307

HEROES OF TO-DAY

cred. Mr. Hoover, who was at Tientsin in
charge of important mining interests, found
himself at the storm-center. It was his task to
help save his faithful workers, yellow men as
well as white, from the infuriated mob.

There was a time when it looked as if the ris-
ing tide of rebellion would sweep away all that
opposed it before reinforcements from the
Western nations could arrive. And when the
troops did pour into Peking and Tientsin to
rescue the besieged foreigners, another lawless
period succeeded. Mr. Hoover found it almost
as hard to protect property and innocent Chi-
nese from soldiers, thirsty for loot, as it had
been to hold the desperate Boxers at bay. The
victorious troops as well as the vanquished
fanatics seemed to

have eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner.

The master of mines had a chance to prove
himself now a master of men. He succeeded in
safeguarding the interests of his company, and
somehow he managed, too, to keep his faith in
people in spite of the war madness. He never
doubted that the wave of unreason and cruelty

308

HERBERT C. HOOVER

would pass, like the blackness of a storm. Rea-
son and humanity would prevail, and kindly
Nature would make each battle-scarred field of
struggle and bloodshed smile again with flow-
ers.

The adventure of living led the Hoovers to
Australia, to Africa, to any and all places
where there were mines to be worked. As man-
ager of some very important mining interests
Mr. Hoover's judgment was sought wherever
the struggle to win the treasures of the rocks
presented special problems. He had now
gained wealth and influence, but he was too big
a man to rest back on what he had accomplished
and content himself with making money.

"I have all the money I need," he said. "I
want to do some real work ; it 's only doing
things that counts."

You know, of course, the joy of doing some-
thing quite apart from anything you have to
do, just because you have taken up with the idea
for its own sake. Then you run to meet any
amount of effort, and work becomes play. Mr.
Hoover and his wife now took up a task to-
gether with all the zest that one puts into a

309

HEROES OF TO-DAY

fascinating game. Can you imagine getting
fun out of translating a great Latin book about
mines and minerals!

"For some time I have looked forward to
putting old Agricola into English," explained
Mr. Hoover; "we are having a real holiday
working it up. ' '

"Who in the world was Agricola, and what
does he matter to you?" demanded his friend,
in amazement.

"Agricola, my dear fellow, was the Latinized
name of a German mining engineer who lived
in the early part of the sixteenth century — a
time when it was not only the fashion to turn
one's name into Latin, but to write all books
of any importance in that language. He mat-
ters a good deal to any one who happens to be
especially interested in the science of mining.
This volume we are at work on is the corner-
stone of that science."

"How, then, does it happen that it has never
been translated before?" asked the friend.

"Well," replied Mr. Hoover, with some hesi-
tation, "you see it wasn't a particularly easy
job. Agricola 's Latin had its limitations, but

310

HERBERT C. HOOVER

his knowledge of minerals and mining problems
was prodigious. Only a mining expert could
possibly get at what he was trying to say, and
most mining experts have something more pay-
ing to do than to undertake a thing of this kind. "

"I see," retorted his friend, with a smile;
''you are doing this because you have nothing
more paying to do!"

"Yes," replied Mr. Hoover, quietly, "there
is nothing that is more paying than the thing
that is your work — because you particularly
want to do it."

Mr. Hoover would say without any hesita-
tion that the work which he volunteered to do
when the storm of the great war broke on Eu-
rope in August, 1914, was "paying" in the
same way. This citizen of the world was at his
London headquarters, from which, as consult-
ing engineer, he was directing vast mining inter-
ests, when the panic of fear seized the crowds
of American tourists who had gone abroad as
to a favorite pleasure-park and had found it
suddenly transformed into a battle-field. Hun-
dreds of people were as frightened and helpless
as children caught in a burning building. All

311

HEROES OF TO-DAY

at once they found themselves in a strange,
threatening world, without means of escape.

"Nobody seemed to know what was to be done
with us, and nobody seemed to care, ' ' explained
a Vassar girl. * * Their mobilizing was the only
thing that mattered to them. There were no
trains and steamers for us, and no money for
our checks and letters of credit. Then Mr.
Hoover came to the rescue. He saw that some-
thing was done, and it was done effectively. It
took generalship, I can tell you, to handle that
stampede — to get people from the Continent
into England, to arrange for the advancement of
funds to meet their needs, and to provide means
of getting them back to America. They say he
is a wonderful engineer, but I don't think he
ever carried through any more remarkable engi-
neering feat than that was!"

The matter of giving temporary relief and
providing transportation for some six or seven
thousand anxious Americans was a simple un-
dertaking, however, compared to Mr. Hoover's
next task.

In the autumn of 1914 the cry of a whole na-
tion in distress startled the world. The people

312

HERBERT C. HOOVER

of Belgium were starving. The terror and de-
struction of war had swept over a helpless little
country leaving want and misery everywhere.
There was need of instant and efficient aid. Of
course only a neutral would be permitted to
serve, and equally of course, only a man used
to handling great enterprises — a captain of in-
dustry and a master of men — would be able to
serve in such a crisis. It did not take a prophet
or seer to see in Herbert Clark Hoover, that
master of vast engineering projects who had
given himself so generously to helping his fel-
low-Americans in distress, a man fitted to meet
the needs of the time. And Mr. Walter H. Page,
American Ambassador to England, appealed to
Mr. Hoover, American in London, citizen of
the world and lover of humanity, to act as chair-
man of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

"Who is this Mr. Hoover, and will he be really
able to man and manage the relief-ship?" was
demanded on every side, in America as well as
in Europe.

"If anybody can save Belgium, he can,"
vouched Mr. Page. "There never was such a
genius for organization. He can grasp the

313

HEROES OF TO-DAY

most complex problems, wheels within wheels,
and get all the cogs running in perfect harmony.
Besides, he will have the courage to act promptly
as well as effectively when once he has deter-
mined on the right course to pursue. He is not
afraid of precedent and red tape. A man who
has developed and directed large mining inter-
ests all over the world and who has been consult-
ing engineer for over fifty mining companies,
he cares more about doing a good job than mak-
ing money. He 's giving himself now heart and
soul to this relief work, and we may be sure, if
the thing is humanly possible, that he will find
a way."

Can you picture to yourself the plight of Bel-
gium after the cruel war-machine had mowed
down all industries and trade -and had swept
the fields bare of crops and farm animals?
Think of a country, about the size of the State
of Maryland, so closely dotted with towns and
villages that there were more than eight mil-
lion people living there — as many people as
there are in all our great western States on the
Pacific side of the Rocky Mountains. This
smallest country of Europe was the most

314

HEEBERT C. HOOVER

densely settled and the most prosperous. The
Belgians were a nation of skilled workers.
Many were makers of cloth and lace. The
linen, woolen, and delicate cotton fabrics woven
in Belgium were as famous as Brussels carpets
and Brussels lace. Since it was a land particu-
larly rich in coal, manufacturing of all sorts
was very profitable. There were important
metal-works; nail, wire, and brass factories;
and workshops of gold and silver articles. The
glass and pottery works were also important.
Little Belgium was a veritable hive of busy
workers, whose products were sent all over the
world.

Of course, you can see that an industrial coun-
try like this would have to import much of its
food. The small farms and market-gardens
could not at best supply the needs of the people
for more than three or four months of the year.
Just as our big cities must depend on importing
provisions from the country, so Belgium de-
pended on buying food-stuffs from agricultural
communities in exchange for her manufactured
articles.

Now can you realize what happened when the
315

HEROES OF TO-DAY

war came? There was no longer any chance
for the people to make and sell their goods. All
the mills and metal-works were stopped. The
conquerors seized all the mines and metals.
Everything that could serve Germany in any
way was shipped to that country. The rail-
roads, of course, were in the hands of the Ger-
mans, and so each town and village was cut off
from communication with the rest of the world.
The harvests that had escaped destruction by
the trampling armies were seized to feed the
troops. Even the scattered farm-houses were
robbed of their little stores of grain and vege-
tables.

The task with which Mr. Hoover had to cope
was that of buying food for ten million people
(in Belgium and northern France), shipping it
across seas made dangerous by mines and sub-
marines of the warring nations, and distributing
it throughout an entire country without any of
the normal means of transportation. Let us see
how he went to work. First he secured the help
of other energetic, able young Americans who
only wanted to be put to work. Chief among
these volunteers were the Rhodes scholars at

316

Cbciftmao m c m j:

It!) the COTDUl tlMllUS Of t!)f

poor rliilDrcn of amtfflrrp

to rfific hniD-ljfartfD commote
of fhf Diurr D s>ratca for ttif ir

///// ./ t

A n I VT c r p Primed with the old

ChritropbonB Planiinos

The Belgian children 's Christmas card, printed at
the Plantin Museum in Antwerp

HERBEKT C. HOOVER

Oxford, picked men who had been given special
opportunities and who realized that true educa-
tion means ability to serve. Without confusion
or delay the relief army was organized and the
campaign for the war sufferers under way.

It was a business without precedents, a sea
that had never been charted, this work of the
Relief Commission. At a time when England
was vitally and entirely concerned with her war
problems and when all railroads and steamships
were supposed to be at the command of the gov-
ernment, Mr. Hoover quietly arranged for the
transportation of supplies to meet the immedi-
ate needs of Belgium. Going on the principle
that "when a thing is really necessary it is bet-
ter to do it first and ask permission afterward,"
Mr. Hoover saw his cargoes safely stowed and
the hatches battened down before he went to
secure his clearance papers.

* ' We must be permitted to leave at once, ' ' he
declared urgently. "If I do not get four car-
goes of food to Belgium by the end of the week,
thousands are going to die of starvation, and
many more may be shot in food riots. ' '

"Out of the question!" replied the cabinet
319

HEROES OF TO-DAY

minister, positively. " There is no time, in the
first place, and if there were, there are no good
wagons to be spared by the railways, no dock
hands, and no steamers. Besides, the Channel
is closed to merchant ships for a week to allow
the passage of army transports."

"I have managed to get all these things,"
Hoover interposed, "and am now through with
them all except the steamers. This wire tells
me that these are loaded and ready to sail, and I
have come to you to arrange for their clear-
ance."

The distinguished official looked at Hoover
aghast. "There have been men sent to the
Tower for less than you have done, young
man!" he exclaimed. "If it was for anything
but Belgium Relief, — if it was anybody but
you, — I should hate to think of what might hap-
pen. As it is — I suppose I must congratulate
you on a jolly clever coup. I '11 see about the
clearance papers at once."

First and last, the chief obstacles with which
the Relief Commission had to deal were due to
the suspicions of the two great antagonists,
England and Germany, each of whom was bent

320

HERBERT C. HOOVER

on preventing the other from securing the slight-
est advantage from the least chance or mis-
chance. Now it was the British Foreign Office
which sent a long communication, fairly swathed
in red tape, suggesting changes in relief meth-
ods, which, if carried out, would have held up
the food of seven million people for two days.
In this stress Mr. Hoover dispensed with the
services of a clerk and wrote the following let-
ter, which served to lighten a dark day at the
Foreign Office, in his own hand :

Dear Blank:

It strikes me that trying to feed the Belgians is like try-
ing to feed a hungry little kitten by means of a forty-foot
bamboo pole, said kitten confined in a barred cage occupied
by two hungry lions.

Yours sincerely,

HERBERT C. HOOVER.

In April, 1915, a German submarine, in its
zeal to nip England, torpedoed one of the Com-
mission's food-ships, and somewhat later an
aeroplane tried to drop bombs on another. Mr.
Hoover at once paid a flying visit to Berlin. He
was assured that Germany regretted the inci-
dent and that it would not happen again.

"Thanks," said Hoover. "Perhaps your
321

HEKOES OF TO-DAY

Excellency has heard about the man who was
bitten by a bad-tempered dog? He went to the
owner to have the dog muzzled.

" 'But the dog won't bite you,' insisted the
owner.

" 'You know he won't bite me, and I know
he won't bite me,' said the injured man, doubt-
fully, 'but the question is, does the dog know?' "

"Herr Hoover," said the high official, "par-
don me if I leave you for a moment. I am going
at once to 'let the dog know.' "

Another incident which throws light on the
character and influence of our citizen of the
world was related by Mr. Lloyd-George, the
first man of England, to a group of friends at
the Liberal Club. Here is the story in the
great Welshman's own words:

" 'Mr. Hoover,' I said, 'I find I am quite un-
able to grant your request in the matter of Bel-
gian exchange, and I have asked you to come
here that I might explain why. ' Without wait-
ing for me to go on, my boyish-looking caller
began speaking. For fifteen minutes he spoke
without a break — just about the clearest utter-
ance I have ever heard on any subject. He used

322

HERBERT C. HOOVER

not a word too much, nor yet a word too few.
By the time he had finished I had come to real-
ize not only the importance of his contentions,
but, what was more to the point, the practicabil-
ity of granting his request. So I did the only
thing possible under the circumstances — told
him I had never understood the question before,
thanked him for helping me to understand it,
and saw that things were arranged as he wanted
them."

As Mr. Lloyd-George was impressed by the
quiet efficiency of his "boyish-looking caller,"
so the whole world was impressed by the mas-
terly system with which the great work was car-
ried forward. Wheat was bought by the ship-
load in Argentina, transported to Belgium,
where it was milled and made into bread, and
then sold for less than the price in London.
The details of distribution were so handled as
to remove all chance for waste and dishonesty;
and finally, the cost of the work itself — the total
expense of the Relief Commission — was less
than one-half of one per cent, of the money ex-
pended.

Many of the Belgians were, of course, able to
323

HEROES OF TO-DAY

pay for their food. They had property or se-
curities on which money could be raised. The
destitute people were the peasants and wage-
earners whose only dependence for daily bread
— their daily labor — had been taken from them
by the war.

In the winter of 1917 Mr. Hoover came to
America to tell about conditions in Belgium and
the work of the Relief Commission. Looking
his fellow-citizens quietly in the face he said:
"America has received virtually all the credit
for the help given, and we do not deserve it.
Out of $250,000,000 that have been spent, only
$9,000,000 have come from the United States,
the rich nation blest with peace — who owes,
moreover, much of her present prosperity to
the misfortunes of the unhappy Belgians, for
the greater part of the money expended for re-
lief supplies has come to this country."

There is not a child in Belgium who does not
know how Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American
Ambassador, and other American "Great-
hearts," have stood by them in their terrible
need, just as they know that the wonderful
" Christmas Ship," laden with gifts from chil-

324

HERBERT C. HOOVER

dren to children, came from America. They
have come to look on the Stars and Stripes as
the symbol of all that is good and kind. In his
book, "War Bread," Mr. Edward E. Hunt, who
was one of the members of the Relief Commis-
sion, prints several letters from Belgian chil-
dren. Here is one signed "Marie Meersman."

I have often heard a little girl friend of mine speak of
an uncle who sent her many things from America, and I
was jealous. But now I have more than one uncle, and
they send me more than my friend's uncle did, for it is
thanks to you, dear uncles, that I have a good slice of
bread every day.

All Americans who once realize that by far
the greater part of the money spent for Bel-
gium has come from the nations on whom the
burdens of war are pressing most heavily must
want America to do much more.

Do you know the story of the kind-hearted
passer-by who was so moved by the misfortune
of a workman, hurt in an accident, that he ex-
claimed aloud, in an agonized tone, "Poor fel-
low ! Poor, poor fellow ! ' ' Another bystander,
however, reached in his pocket and drew out
some money. "Here," he said, turning to the

325

HEROES OF TO-DAY

first speaker, "I am sorry five dollars' worth.
How sorry are you?"

That is the question that Mr. Hoover has put
to America : ' ' What value do you put on your
thankfulness for peace and prosperity and your
sympathy for a suffering people less .fortunate
than yourselves 7 ' '

As we look at Mr. Hoover, however, we say,
"In giving him to the work, America has at
least given of her best." And we like to think
that he is truly American because his interests
and sympathies are as broad as humanity, be-
cause all mankind is his business, because in
deed and in truth he is "a citizen of the world."

THE END

326

C

Pi

O—7

THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

A 001 083 910 8